el producto #407 🚀
Apple Intelligence Beta, PM salaries, Growth frameworks, AI agents, Klarna Trading, The AI value chain, Apple Pay's future, Open banking "opens" more in the US, & more
Hi folks 👋
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto
🎰 The week in figures
$5.6B: Waymo has just closed a massive $5.6B funding round, bringing its total capital to over $11B, to fuel the expansion of its robotaxi service in cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. This Series C intends to scale Waymo's reach and refine its self-driving tech for both ride-hailing and business applications. As the only AV company with commercial robotaxis across several major cities, Waymo is making waves with over 100,000 trips a week, despite the hurdles and competition in the driverless race
$2B: PI, a young startup developing LLMs to power robots, is in talks to raise $300M at a $2B valuation
$1.1B: Stripe is buying stablecoin technology startup Bridge in a $1.1B deal. Stablecoins have seen their star rise in recent quarters, thanks to growing prominence of Circle, the company behind USDC, and strong demand for the digital tokens. Fans of fiat currencies, don’t worry. Stablecoins bring fiat on-chain, which is an ironic killer use-case for blockchains
$500M: Perplexity, the Bezos and Nvidia-backed AI search startup is looking to raise ~$500M in a new round that would double its valuation to $8B
$280M: An autonomous AI Agent created a new religion and launched a $280M market cap crypto memecoin, making it the first millionaire AI
$190M: ZipHQ, the San Francisco startup uses AI to streamline purchasing, raised $190M at a $2.2B valuation
$119M: Chinese self-driving startup WeRide has filed for a $119.4M IPO on Nasdaq, alongside a private placement of $320.5M. The company aims for a potential valuation of up to $5.02B. This move marks one of the largest U.S. IPOs by a Chinese firm since Didi's delisting, signaling a potential revival of Chinese IPOs in the U.S. after years of regulatory challenges
$100M: Valon, a New York City-based mortgage servicing platform, secured $100M in Series C funding to enhance its technology and expand its market presence
48M: Daze, a creative, AI-powered messaging app for Gen Z, is blowing up prelaunch, with a video viewed over 48M times on social media and its waitlist already boasting over 150K sign-ups
📰 What’s going on
Apple Intelligence features rollout in beta. Apple is rolling out AI features, including ChatGPTintegration, Visual Intelligence, and creative AI tools like Genmoji and Image Playground
Apple has abruptly reduced production of the Vision Pro headset and could stop making the current version of the device completely by the end of 2024
Microsoft is launching new autonomous AI agents next month to try and compete with startups and Salesforce who have been promoting the idea of AI agents replacing workers in specific tasks
Anthropic released an update to its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, adding a “Computer Use” to it. Now, Claude can use your PC for you, allowing for text-prompted task completion on the desktop. While RPA and other models executed similar work, Anthropic’s offering could unlock homebrew tinkering and corporate experimentation alike. For example, it can take this prompt and create an entire website from it:
Navigate to a new Chrome window, navigate to claude.ai, and once loaded, ask Claude to create a personal website with a 90s style theme
You can see the results in this video
Amazon is rolling out major new UI updates on its homescreen . Some of the new components include a new “Window Display” along with product groupings and horizontal scrollable carousels. It also looks as though these components use a new font which Amazon is slowly rolling out across different products
Netflix shuts down 'AAA' Team Blue gaming studio, amid gaming shake-up. Netflix’s gaming strategy is getting pared down. While Netflix is not yet known for gaming — akin to how Spotify was once not synonymous with podcasts — it has aspirations to expand into more interactive entertainment. You can see the logic, as Netflix has its own IP to mine for gaming titles and lots of users whose time it wants more of. It’s just hard to get into a new category, especially one as established and competitive as gaming
Klarna to develop trading products. Klarna posted a job ad indicating that it plans to debut a Robinhood-like stock trading app
Venmo can now be used to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum via MoonPay. In a recent announcement, the payments giant said that U.S. customers could now buy digital coins and tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum on MoonPay using their Venmo accounts
Plaid to ease transfers between brokerages. Open banking platform Plaid launched a new suite of features to make it easier for investors to move their holdings from one brokerage to another. Right timing, given that:
The top US consumer finance watchdog has finalised long-awaited “open banking” rules that it hopes will inject more competition into a market with more than 4,000 lendersand make it easier for customers to link their bank accounts to newer apps. This move brings the US more in line with practices in the UK and Europe
Asana has released a new feature called AI Studio. It uses Asana’s Work Graph to allow users to create what it calls “Smart Workflows” to automate things like Product launches and resource management. Asana says that during its internal testing they found that it was particularly valuable for user research teams who could use it for automating user interviews and sales teams who could use it for gathering prospect information, calculating pricing, and matching each lead with the correct partner—factoring in regional differences and partner discounts
📚 Good reads
Apple celebrates 10 years of Apple Pay. Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s VP of Apple Pay, reflects on a decade of changing how the world pays. From the early vision of using your iPhone for everything—from groceries to train tickets—Apple Pay has transformed into a global payment leader, now active in 78 markets and supported by over 11,000 banks. With 90% of users praising its ease, 88% its privacy, and 87% its security, it’s no wonder Apple Pay boasts a 98% recommendation rate. And Apple isn’t stopping here—next up, rewards, installment payments, and more ways to connect with banks and issuers
To go broad, go deep, by Rex Woodbury. Depth creates unique insights that are hard to replicate and hard to fake. When you see something only because you went deep in a space/trade/domain, you understand the nuances and root causes of things that other “PowerPoint founders”—people who whiteboard out markets and look for opportunities—can easily miss. The more time spent in the weeds before zooming out is what gives you the necessary perspective to build what you know
The future of AI value chain. Sequoia Capital's latest deep read on Generative AI has one key takeaway: foundational models, while powerful, still pose challenges for mainstream use. “Foundation models are magic, but they’re also messy." The enterprises can’t afford to deal with unpredictable AI outputs or unclear workflows. This opens up massive opportunities in the application layer. What’s fascinating is how the “wrappers” once dismissed as superficial layers over models like GPT-3 have now evolved into critical cognitive architectures—a proven way to build lasting value in the AI ecosystem. What started as a basic interface now enables AI to be applied in structured, reliable, and transformative ways for businesses and consumers alike. Finally, is this a clear glance at how AI could become the next platform shift?
Anthropic’s CEO shares his view on the future of AI. In a letter entitled “Machines of Loving Grace: How AI Could Transform the World for the Better” Dario Amodei makes the following predictions:
AI could compress 50-100 years of biological and medical progress into 5-10 years, eliminating cancer and Alzheimer's
AI-driven economic growth in developing countries could potentially reach 20% annual GDP growth rates
Human lifespan could expand to around 150 years within a compressed timeframe
Growth frameworks. Elena Verna shares 9 great frameworks for growth, including resources deep-diving into each of them
Yes, or… A short, fun and inspiring read by John Cutler looking at the “buts” of popular business principles
How much do U.S. Product Managers really make? Lenny Rachitsky shares the results of surveying 5k PMs, uncovering few interesting insights
That’s all for this week. As usual, feel free to reach out and share your thoughts by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Thanks for your support!
Angel