el producto #454 🚀
Making with Figma Make, Meta & Amazon smart glasses, Notion's AI shift, Gemini in Chrome, How to build AI Agents, Writing AI evals, StubHub IPO, Zoom avatars & more
Hi friends 👋
Happy weekend, and welcome to a new edition of el producto
🎰 The week in figures
$10B: Mercor, an AI training startup connecting firms like OpenAI and Meta with domain experts, is seeking a $10B valuation. $450M ARR. Expanding to software infrastructure for reinforcement learning
$1.1B: Workday acquired AI workplace-tools maker Sana for $1.1B to deepen its enterprise AI push
$800M: StubHub’s IPO raised $800, but shares have tumbled 21% since debut, bucking the recent tech IPO hype
$750M: Groq raised $750M at a $6.9B valuation, challenging Nvidia with its Language Processing Units for AI inference. With over 2M devs using it, Groq aims to scale manufacturing and sales to meet AI infrastructure demand
$500M: Notion has ridden the AI boom to more than $500M in annualized revenue, fueled by surging enterprise adoption and the rollout of new AI-powered features
$100M: Upscale AI raised over $100M to develop AI networking infrastructure based on open standards. Aims to ease network strain with high-performance networks and ultra-low latency interconnects. Targeting a $20B AI infrastructure market
500: xAI laid off 500 workers (33% of its data annotation team) to pivot from general data labeling to specialist AI tutors in STEM and medicine
📰 What’s going on
Google rolled out Gemini in Chrome to U.S. desktop users with AI features including automated task handling, multi-tab analysis, and enhanced scam protection (but businesses only get access in a couple weeks)
Google announced the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), an open standard that required cryptographically signed mandates so AI agents could securely authorize and execute payments across merchants and institutions
PayPal has partnered with Google to enhance AI-driven shopping experiences. PayPal will integrate its payment solutions across Cloud, Ads, and Play, promoting the Agent Payments Protocol for AI-purchases
YouTube has launched a series of new AI features, including the ability for creators to generate Shorts using Google’s Veo 3 models. AI generated videos will be labelled. Other announcements include a brand new AI assistant called “Ask Studio”, targeted to creators, which allows them to ask questions about the performance of their content
AI agents take over Microsoft Teams. Dedicated Copilot agents will join meetings and answer questions in channels
Meta announced new smart glasses: $799 Ray-Ban Display with neural interface; $499 Oakley Vanguard for athletes; Ray-Ban Gen 2 with 8hr battery. Also introduced a gesture-based control system, powered by a neural wristband
Amazon is developing augmented reality glasses codenamed "Jayhawk," set for release in late 2026 or early 2027. The glasses will include microphones, speakers, a camera, and a full-color display, marking its entry into the consumer AR market
Perplexity has launched a new set of MCP connectors that allows you to connect to third-party apps like Calendar, Notion, Linear, and GitHub. Some of the use cases it suggests you include getting a summary of your upcoming meetings, and converting documents into Linear projects with prioritized tasks and subtasks
Figma has unveiled a new feature called “prompt to edit”. It lets you use a conversational prompt to make edits in design files
Notion launches AI agents. Users will be able to name, define, and tune their own agent, which Notion claims will “understand your work [and] take action” on your behalf. The agents include personal agents that are focused on one task, or a whole team of agents who work together to achieve an outcome. Some of the suggested agents include a “bug basher” agent and an agent that helps you prioritize your product roadmap
OpenAI dropped a new model: GPT-5-Codex. A fast, optimized model for agentic coding
OpenAI's reasoning models achieved a perfect 12/12 score at the ICPC World Finals, the most prestigious programming competition in the world… and outperformed every human team. Google's Gemini 2.5 Deep Think also outperformed humans, and won gold, solving 10 out of 12 problems
Zoom announced that you’ll soon be able to create a “photorealistic” avatar of yourself in case you aren’t “camera-ready.” Zoom plans on launching this feature to Workplace users in December, allowing you to generate an AI lookalike based on a photo of yourself that you upload or capture directly in the app
Robinhood filed an SEC application to create Robinhood Ventures Fund I, offering 24M users access to pre-IPO startup investments in sectors like aerospace, AI, and fintech. A move aimed at opening up startup investing to the masses
📚 Good reads
15 ways to use AI at home to build your product toolbox. Teresa Torres shares practical, step-by-step ways to experiment with AI in daily life, from smarter searches to meal planning and travel. Each use case helps you build core product skills like prompt engineering, workflow design, and context management. Start small, iterate, and let your personal AI experiments fuel your growth as a PM
[Podcast] How to build AI agents to 10x PM productivity. Jacob Bank (ex-Gmail PM, now Relay.app CEO) shares how AI agents can automate PM workflows, from executive assistants to 40-agent marketing teams. He breaks down when to use workflows vs. autonomous agents, why human-in-the-loop matters, and how to pick the right AI model for each task
The agentic era: clarity in AI’s messy middle. AI’s rapid progress is both thrilling and overwhelming for builders. Jaclyn Konzelmann shares frameworks for designing agents, stressing the importance of user experience and iterative launches. Her advice: embrace the chaos, keep experimenting, and learn by building
[Podcast] Why expert-written AI evals are fueling record-breaking startups. AI’s biggest bottleneck isn’t model training—it’s defining what “good” looks like. Mercor’s explosive growth comes from helping top labs hire experts to create evals and training data, making them the fastest company ever to $500M revenue
Why most PMs are invisible—and how to become visible. PMs often get stuck managing backlogs and noise, not real product value. David Pereira urges PMs to focus on one meaningful goal, cut distractions before prioritizing, and prove impact with data—not just output. If you want to be irreplaceable, stop being a backlog manager and start leading with clarity
How Agentic AI lets managers code at scale. After years away from hands-on coding, Elliot Graebert used AI tools to jump back in, rapidly closing tickets and contributing meaningful code—even without deep technical expertise. By scaling up from “vibe coding” (AI-assisted pair programming) to agentic AI (delegating tasks to autonomous agents), he multiplied his impact and enabled non-engineers to contribute directly
Why Figma Make it the next leap in design-to-code tools: a quick guide. Figma Make brings AI-powered front-end coding directly into the design workflow, letting designers build, test, and ship real apps without leaving Figma. The tool lowers the barrier for prototyping and iteration, making it easier to go from idea to functional product and share live links for user testing. As design and development converge, mastering tools like Figma Make is quickly becoming a must for product teams
The economics of AI code generation are breaking as reasoning models scale. AI coding agents exploded in revenue thanks to new reasoning models, but the cost of inference is outpacing growth, forcing vendors to rethink pricing and throttle usage. Margin pressure is driving consolidation, with acqui-hires and reverse acqui-hires becoming common as big tech snaps up talent. Open models and usage-based pricing offer hope, but enterprise adoption is slow, and compute risk remains a big challenge
That’s a wrap for this week! 🌟
I’d love to hear your thoughts—what stood out to you, and how are you thinking about integrating these insights into your Product strategy? Reply to the email or drop a comment on Substack to share your take. And if you found this valuable, forward it to a fellow PM, Product enthusiast, startup founder or entrepreneur who’d enjoy the read
More next week! 👋
Angel