This Week in AI

Grads boo AI, Reese Witherspoon gets dunked + Karpathy joins Anthropic | TWiAI E14

The frontier labs are coming for the application layer, and they're going to steal your idea. We dug into Andrej Karpathy's move to Anthropic, the new rules of AI etiquette, and why graduates are booing AI at commencement speeches. This week's roundtable: Kanjun Qiu (CEO of Imbue, building open source agents), Jeremy Fraenkel (CEO of Fundamental, large tabular models for enterprise data), and Karri Saarinen (CEO of Linear, the product development system used by OpenAI, Coinbase, Cursor, Ramp, and Cash App). Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 Cold open 1:02 Welcome to Episode 14 of This Week in AI 1:45 Kanjun Qiu on Imbue's GPU cluster bet that funds the company 5:38 Jeremy Fraenkel on why LLMs choke on structured enterprise data 9:36 Karri Saarinen on Linear and product work for AI agents 12:50 Design in the age of AI: why early-stage product design is getting worse 21:18 Jason coins "AI etiquette": your output is your responsibility 33:30 Andre Karpathy joins Anthropic 40:00 The cult of each AI lab: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI 47:00 Anthropic's pricing misstep and the "punk software" movement 50:00 The verticalization war coming for the application layer 55:00 "Claude knows more about me than my partner": power concentration in AI 58:30 Mac M5 clusters and confidential compute on AWS 1:07:30 Graduates boo AI at commencement: Schmidt, Borchetta, Cawfield 1:22:00 Four founders deliver their own commencement speeches 1:28:30 Reese Witherspoon vs the New York Times 1:33:00 Plugs and where to find the guests 🔗 Guests on X: Kanjun Qiu, Imbue: https://imbue.com | https://x.com/kanjun Jeremy Fraenkel, Fundamental: https://fundamental.tech | https://x.com/fraenkelj Karri Saarinen, Linear: https://linear.app | https://x.com/karrisaarinen 🔗 Referenced in this episode: Andre Karpathy joins Anthropic (announcement): https://x.com/karpathy/status/2056753169888334312?s=20 Imbue Blueprint (open source agent skill): https://imbue.com/blueprint ExoLabs (daisy-chained Mac clusters): https://exolabs.net Abacus (on-prem language models): https://goabacus.co Whisper Flow (voice-to-text): https://wisprflow.ai Perplexity Model Council: https://perplexity.ai NYT editorial on Reese Witherspoon and AI: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/opinion/reese-witherspoon-mel-robbins-girlboss-ai.html 🔗 Subscribe and follow: Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai #ThisWeekInAI #AI #Imbue #Fundamental #Linear #Anthropic #OpenAI #Karpathy #AIEtiquette #VibeCoding #PunkSoftware #AICommencement #OpenSourceAI

How the 1% Will Own Compute (and What It Means for You)

The future of AI isn't a smarter chatbot. It's a model that watches your screen, listens to the room, and acts on what it sees. We dug into Thinking Machines' new interaction model, what it means for compute, and the layoff wave that's already here.This week's roundtable: Anastasios Angelopoulos (CEO of Arena, formerly LMArena), Nick Harris (CEO of Lightmatter, photonic computing chips), and Philip Johnston (CEO of StarCloud, building megawatt data centers in space). Thank you to our exclusive sponsor: PayPal Open, One Platform for All Business: http://paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 Cold open 1:21 Welcome to Episode 13 2:51 Is China closing the AI gap? Arena's data 5:16 Lightmatter and the photonic interconnect bottleneck 9:42 StarCloud 2, Nvidia Space Ruben 1, and orbital data centers 17:24 Thinking Machines' interaction model: what's actually new 28:22 Whisper Flow and the 3-pedal desk setup 33:48 Real-time desktop and camera awareness as the real unlock 40:25 Why this 100x's compute demand 42:43 The polarization of compute and $10M personal data centers 49:25 The layoff wave: Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork 54:48 The 10x gap between AI-first and non-AI-first employees 59:52 Unlimited agency and the abundance future 1:00:46 Anthropic's Project Luna runs a retail store 1:03:45 Decoupling labor from value creation 1:05:03 P(doom) round 🔗 Guests: Anastasios Angelopoulos, Arena: https://arena.ai | @ML_Angelopolous Nick Harris, Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co Philip Johnston, StarCloud: https://starcloud.com | @philipjohnston 🔗 Referenced in this episode: Thinking Machines, Introducing Interaction Models: https://thinkingmachines.ai/blog/interaction-models/ LMArena leaderboard: https://lmarena.ai Lightmatter: https://lightmatter.co Starcloud: https://www.starcloud.com TechCrunch, Cloudflare says AI made 1,100 jobs obsolete: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/08/cloudflare-says-ai-made-1100-jobs-obsolete-even-as-revenue-hit-a-record-high/ Fast Company, Tech layoffs this week due to AI (Cloudflare, PayPal, Coinbase, Upwork): https://www.fastcompany.com/91538995/tech-layoffs-due-to-ai-this-week-cloudflare-paypal-coinbase-upwork Bloomberg, South Korea floats citizen dividend from AI profits: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-05-12/korea-s-massive-ai-boom-triggers-call-for-tech-tax-roiling-market PYMNTS, Inside a retail store run entirely by AI (Andon Labs / Luna): https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2026/inside-a-retail-store-run-entirely-by-ai/ Wispr Flow (voice-to-text tool Jason uses): https://wisprflow.ai Fermi Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox 🔗 Subscribe and follow: Newsletter and all platforms: https://thisweekinai.ai #ThisWeekInAI #AI #ThinkingMachines #Lightmatter #StarCloud #Arena #Anthropic #ProjectLuna #AIcompute #AIlayoffs #Superintelligence

Is Anthropic a Cult? AI Beats ER Doctors & Recursive Self-Improvement | This Week in AI E12

This week, JCal sits down with two builders working on opposite ends of the AI stack: Naveen Rao, co-founder and CEO of Unconventional AI (his $4.5B startup rethinking the computer from first principles), and Trey Holterman, co-founder and CEO of Tennr, the platform automating the messy paperwork that decides whether millions of patients ever get the care they need. They break down why AI already beats ER doctors at diagnosis, why Epic is the most hated company in healthcare, what it takes to disrupt healthcare's $5 trillion incumbents, and whether $1.1 trillion in hyperscaler CapEx will pay off before the energy runs out. Mentioned in the show: * Unconventional AI: https://unconv.ai [https://unconv.ai] * Tennr: https://tennr.com [https://tennr.com] * Abridge: https://abridge.com [https://abridge.com] * Ambience Healthcare: https://ambiencehealthcare.com [https://ambiencehealthcare.com] * Epic: https://epic.com [https://epic.com] * Plaud (NotePin): https://plaud.ai [https://plaud.ai] * Whoop: https://whoop.com [https://whoop.com] * Function Health: https://functionhealth.com [https://functionhealth.com] * Oura: https://ouraring.com [https://ouraring.com] * Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com [https://eightsleep.com] * Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai [https://perplexity.ai] * Databricks: https://databricks.com [https://databricks.com] * Harvard / Beth Israel ER study: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/ai/ai-outperforms-doctors-diagnosis-harvard-study [https://www.harvardmagazine.com/ai/ai-outperforms-doctors-diagnosis-harvard-study] * Jack Clark on recursive self-improvement: https://jack-clark.net [https://jack-clark.net] This Week In AI is made possible by:PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https://paypalopen.com [https://paypalopen.com] Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open 00:51 Welcome & intro to Naveen Rao (Unconventional AI) and Trey Holterman (Tennr) 05:43 Tennr's mission: fixing the U.S. healthcare "black hole" 06:23 Why primary care is changing in the AI era 09:09 The radiologist that wasn't replaced & what AI got right in 2015 15:31 Harvard study: AI beats ER doctors 67% to 55% 20:16 Plaud Pin & the always-on AI in the exam room 22:29 AI scribes, EMR privacy & how Abridge actually works 24:01 Whoop, Aura & when wearable data finally meets the clinic 25:20 Epic, FHIR & the 800-pound gorilla of healthcare 34:21 Disrupting Epic with an open-source EMR play 37:20 The Abridge vs Ambience scribe wars 42:06 Jack Clark's 60% odds on recursive self-improvement by 2028 53:41 Morgan Stanley's $1.1 trillion hyperscaler CapEx forecast 1:04:53 Anthropic's marketing machine & the AI religion thesis Subscribe to This Week in AI on Apple: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify [https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify] Subscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/apple [https://thisweekinai.ai/apple] Thanks for watching! 🤖 If you want to stay ahead of the curve on all things AI, make sure to join our community across all platforms: 📩 Get the Weekly Newsletter: https://thisweekinai.ai/ [https://thisweekinai.ai/] 📺 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThisWeekinAIPodcast [https://www.youtube.com/@ThisWeekinAIPodcast] 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinaipodcast [https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinaipodcast] 📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinaipodcast [https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinaipodcast] ✖️X: https://x.com/ThisWeeknAI [https://x.com/ThisWeeknAI] Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason [https://twitter.com/Jason] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis] Follow Oliver: https://x.com/oliverkorzen [https://x.com/oliverkorzen] Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ [https://partners.launch.co/]

Cursor's $60B Deal, DeepSeek V4 & the Death of the AI Moat | This Week in AI E11

This week Jason sits down with three founders at the frontier of AI infrastructure, software development, and vertical AI: Matan Grinberg, co-founder and CEO of Factory; Russ d'Sa, co-founder and CEO of LiveKit; and George Sivulka, founder and CEO of Hebbia. They break down why AI coding agents are more powerful than vibe coding, how voice became the default interface for AI, why LLMs are becoming commoditized like RAM, and what it actually takes to build a moat in 2026. Mentioned in the show: * Factory: https://factory.ai [https://factory.ai] * LiveKit: https://livekit.io [https://livekit.io] * Hebbia: https://hebbia.com [https://hebbia.com] * Cursor: https://cursor.com [https://cursor.com] * DeepSeek V4: https://deepseek.com [https://deepseek.com] * SpaceX / xAI: https://x.ai [https://x.ai] * Polymarket (Cursor acquisition odds): https://polymarket.com/event/will-spacex-acquire-cursor [https://polymarket.com/event/will-spacex-acquire-cursor] * LM Arena (model benchmarks): https://lmarena.ai [https://lmarena.ai] * SWE-bench (coding benchmarks): https://swebench.com [https://swebench.com] * Silicon Valley HBO clip (Son of Anton): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0b_D2JgZgY [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0b_D2JgZgY] This Week In AI is made possible by: PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https/:/paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro & AGI debate: where are we really? 02:26 Meet the guests: Matan Grinberg, Russ d'Sa, George Sivulka 03:30 Factory's mission: bringing autonomy to software engineering 04:29 LiveKit's origin: open source WebRTC to ChatGPT voice backbone 07:40 Learned helplessness and the raptor fence: a founder story 10:31 Hebbia: financial superintelligence for capital markets 13:21 SpaceX acquiring Cursor for $60B: the deal breakdown 17:28 Why enterprises can't standardize on one model provider 21:50 The Silicon Valley clip: when AI deletes all the software 23:09 How AI coding tools have changed internal dev workflows 26:28 Moats in the age of vibe coding: what actually protects you 30:12 The relentless iteration promise as a company's core moat 33:40 Slack example: the buy vs. build calculation in 2026 38:10 Deterministic agents and encoding institutional expertise 41:17 LLMs as commoditized infrastructure: where value pools 45:56 DeepSeek V4 drops mid-episode: $3.48 vs. Claude's $25 50:13 AI in financial markets: arbitrage, meme stocks, and ASI 56:58 China blocks Metas acquisition, OpenAI-Microsoft deal redux 58:41 AGI definitions and who wins the US vs. China model race 01:02:13 US open source embarrassment and the talent war 01:05:23 OpenAI's spend vs. revenue: risk of ruin or name of the game? 01:09:14 Apple's new CEO, M-series compute flood, and space data centers 01:12:08 P-doom scores and final thoughts Subscribe to This Week in AI on Apple: https://thisweekinai.ai/apple [https://thisweekinai.ai/apple] Subscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify: https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify [https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify] Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason [https://twitter.com/Jason] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis] Follow Oliver: https://x.com/oliverkorzen [https://x.com/oliverkorzen] Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ [https://partners.launch.co/]

Aravind Srinivas & Edwin Chen: The $1B Bootstrap, Apple's AI Edge, and Benchmarks | TWiAI E10

This week we sat down with Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen. Aravind is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity, whose revenue has grown from $100M to $500M on the back of Perplexity Computer. Edwin is the co-founder and CEO of Surge AI, the data training company teaching frontier models how to think, which quietly bootstrapped past $1B in revenue without ever raising a dollar. This Week In AI is made possible by: PayPal Open - One Platform for all Business: https://paypalopen.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Cold open 01:00 Welcome & intro to Aravind Srinivas and Edwin Chen 02:40 Why Perplexity Comet and Perplexity Max are taking off 05:25 Edwin on Surge AI and why "data labeling" is the wrong term 10:47 Tim Cook steps down — what Apple's new CEO should do 13:56 Owning your agent loops: why Apple wins 21:20 "The iPhone is not getting disrupted by AI at all" 23:09 $242B raised in Q1 2026 and the late-stage capital flood 23:55 Edwin on bootstrapping Surge past $1B without raising 25:09 The ChatGPT "one weird trick" story and clickbait models 30:58 Claude Code as a loss leader to dominate token collection 33:30 Are we in the endgame for coding? 35:35 Autocomplete to auto-diff to auto-outcomes 38:54 The death of the no-code movement 41:34 30% headcount growth, 5x revenue, the efficiency playbook 45:41 AI in Hollywood, Gal Gadot, and $70M movies that should cost $200M 50:29 "People don't buy models, they buy products" 57:20 Specialization vs commoditization — what actually accrues value58:00 "LM Arena is a cancer on AI" 63:34 Perplexity's heuristics for measuring user intent65:41 Model Council, Jensen Huang, and orchestrating frontier models 71:23 Most impressive AI experiences — WhisperFlow, Grok on X, Claude Design, and WHOOP 78:29 Hiring at Surge AI and Perplexity Subscribe to This Week in AI on Apple:https://thisweekinai.ai/apple Subscribe to This Week in AI on Spotify:https://thisweekinai.ai/spotify Follow Jason: X: @jason LinkedIn: /jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Links Mentioned on the Show: Perplexity: https://perplexity.ai/ Surge AI: https://surge.ai/ Perplexity Comet: https://comet.perplexity.ai/ Perplexity Max: https://perplexity.ai/max Claude Code: https://claude.com/product/claude-code Claude Design: https://claude.com/claude-design OpenAI Codex: https://openai.com/codex GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot Cursor: https://cursor.com/ LM Arena: https://lmarena.ai/ Kimi K2: https://www.kimi.com/ DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com/ Apple Silicon: https://www.apple.com/mac/m4/ WhisperFlow: https://wisprflow.ai/ WHOOP: https://www.whoop.com/