Hi friends 👋
Welcome to a new Week in Product!
🎰 The week in figures
$120B: Anthropic expects its IPO to exceed SpaceX’s record $75B raise, eyeing $100-120B and a $2T valuation, potentially setting a new high as AI companies race to finance unprecedented infrastructure spending
$47.4B: Physical-AI startups raised $47.4B across 521 deals in the first half of 2026, led by giant rounds for Waymo, Anduril, Shield AI, and Saronic
$11.6B: Anthropic passed OpenAI on quarterly revenue ($11.6B in Q2 revenue vs OpenAI’s $6.7B), and posted a small operating profit
$7B: Stripe finalized its $7B+ acquisition of OpenRouter, pushing the payments company deeper into AI infrastructure.
$1B: Poolside, the AI model startup, secured a $1B investment from Nvidia at a $12B valuation, alongside a $6B licensing and hiring deal to fund growth and reward investors
$600M: Fractile, the AI inference chip startup, is in talks to raise $600M at a $6.5B valuation to commercialize chips that accelerate existing AI models
$400M: Higgsfield AI, the AI video startup, raised $400M at a $5.4B valuation
$350M: Groq, the former AI chipmaker, raised $350M at a $3.5B valuation to pivot into a neocloud provider and expand its Nvidia-powered data center footprint
$280M: Wispr, the voice AI startup, raised a $280M Series B at a $2B valuation
$100M: Rillet, an AI-native accounting software provider, raised $100M in a Series C at a $1B valuation
💰Q2 earnings
Klarna just reported a strong Q2. GMV hit $36.6B (+18% YoY), revenue reached $1.04B (+27%), and adjusted operating income jumped 214% to $91M. Transaction margin dollars grew even faster, up 42% to $446M. Klarna now has more than 120M active consumers and 1.2M+ merchants. At the same time, Klarna is becoming more of an everyday financial platform, with 6.5M active Klarna Card users and 2M paying Membership subscribers.
📰 What’s going on
Claude Code shipped /design in research preview, a Concise output style, and auto-continue, which automatically picks up where you left off after hitting a usage limit. Auto mode is also the default on Pro, Max, and Team plans now
OpenAI added Apple Messages integration to ChatGPT’s Mac app, allowing users to search conversations and draft replies across iMessage, SMS, and RCS. By default, the app requires approval before messages are sent
ChatGPT launched an opt-in feature that logs your clicks and keystrokes across apps so it (and Codex) can remember what you were working on
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told employees the company could go public by 2027, or sooner if growth accelerates, framing its IPO as just another fundraise
OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Teens with content restrictions: New version for ages 13-17 blocks suicide, self-harm, and romantic chats while providing homework help designed to guide rather than answer; linked parental controls offer quiet hours and safety notifications
Google's new Theft Protection suite for Android adds motion-sensing lockdown and offline locking to stop snatch-and-run phone thieves cold.
A macOS Tahoe leak revealed camera-enabled AirPods that can see and answer through Siri, ahead of a September launch
Meta AI for Mac adds screen sharing, cross-app dictation, ad analysis, and Google Workspace workflows to Meta’s desktop assistant
Meta rolled out Pocket nationwide in the US. Users prompt AI-generated mini-games, which they can then share or remix, in Meta’s latest attempt to combine AI creativity with a social feed
A newly published Meta patent describes AI glasses using facial recognition to auto-cut highlight reels of your dinner
Amazon makes Alexa+ free on all Fire TV devices. The AI assistant rolls out automatically to compatible devices in the U.S. without requiring Prime membership, following Google and Roku's moves to embed AI across consumer electronics
Amazon has been acquiring rare books in bulk, digitizing them to train, and discarding the physical copies in the process
Slack launched Slack Code across all plans, giving software projects dedicated channels where teams can collaborate with AI coding agents
Ramp launches Router.com for AI model traffic routing. The fintech's new API lets developers compare models on cost, latency, and quality before shifting production traffic, claiming one customer cut model costs by 92%
TikTok is exploring a peer-to-peer payments feature inside its U.S. direct messages, letting users send money to each other without leaving the app
Calendly is launching an AI meeting note-taker + assistant
Atlassian launched a new feature called Jira Planner, designed to help product teams write up specs so that agents know what they’re supposed to build. Once ready, it splits the plan into sequenced Jira work items with acceptance criteria, then hands off to agent orchestration
Salesforce released Data 360 Headless, which lets AI agents access the full Data 360 platform through tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and more
Firefox's new Smart Window adds AI web-aware chat, natural-language search, and automatic tab grouping, built for privacy
🤖 Futurism
GEN-1.5, a robot model, can watch a 3–12-second physical demonstration and immediately attempt the new task. Generalist, the maker, calls it “physical prompting”
An experimental Chinese maglev train broke its own acceleration record, reaching 800 km/h from a standstill in about 5 seconds
📚 Good reads
7 tiny AI business plays you can copy. Melvin Luu shares 7 scrappy AI businesses that hit $10K+ MRR by being radically narrow: solving one painful problem, for one specific customer, at one high‑value moment. A simple playbook for finding unfair advantages in tiny markets that generic AI tools ignore
“Full stack builders” still need teams and standards. AI lets PMs, designers, and engineers all build “full stack,” but skipping collaboration and specialist judgment takes a toll. Think jazz band, not solo act: use AI to draft fast, then bring the cross‑functional team in early to vet, refine, and decide what’s actually customer‑worthy
How Faire built its high‑growth operating system. Dan Hockenmaier distills 9 years at Faire into a playbook where speed, focus, and “constant force” matter more than perfect strategy decks. He shows how doing hard things (like free returns and global expansion), promoting from within, and treating recruiting as a product create defensibility and a self-reinforcing talent flywheel
PostHog’s new semantic layer keeps AI and humans aligned. PostHog built a semantic layer on top of its context warehouse so AI agents and humans use the same, governed definitions for metrics like MRR. It stores these definitions as SQL-backed tables and insight snapshots that agents can query directly, while keeping humans firmly in charge of approving, updating, and flagging drift
🎧 Good listen/watch
[Video Podcast] How PM recruiters scan your LinkedIn profile. Chris Lee, a PM recruiter and founder of Product Scout, explains how he skims LinkedIn and why almost everything at the top of the funnel is driven by keywords and “candidate–market fit.” You’ll come away with concrete ideas to tighten your positioning, sharpen your bullets and metrics, and tell a focused story that fits the specific roles you’re targeting
[Podcast + Article] Waymo’s decade reinventing product management for AI-scale problems. Waymo’s CPO Saswat Panigrahi shows how building self‑driving cars forced PMs to redefine “what good looks like” as its own product
🧑💻 Worth learning
You are the captain of your career. A 1h exercise to own your next move. It walks through picking a clear destination, honestly assessing yourself with evidence, and turning that into a concrete, real‑work “waypoint”. You also get a practical pre-read template, objection handling scripts, and downloadable artifacts you can plug into your next 1:1 with your manager
🔧 Products to try
/eli5. Anthropic’s new /eli5 skill makes Claude explanations clearer and friendlier. HTML-style explainers with big visuals and minimal text, handy for understanding modules, trade‑offs, and incidents
Lenny’s Jobs. Lenny launched a focused job platform for product, design, eng, and growth. Beyond listings, it bakes in AI tools for fit-scoring, outreach, interview prep, and a dedicated AI coach, plus rich company data and filters tailored to how PMs search. Ben Erez shares some tips on how to get the most out of the platform. Free; paid subscribers get a few extra features, like an AI agent that scouts and emails high-fit roles
ChatGPT’s new Apple Messages plugin searches conversations, catches you up, and drafts or sends replies from ChatGPT Work or Codex on Mac; included in ChatGPT Work and Codex on desktop
Grok Build turns one prompt into a published app, game, website, or dashboard with its own domain, with a coding agent that can use subagents, a browser, databases, secrets, and GitHub export; included in every Grok plan
That’s all for this week.
Feel free to drop your comments/questions/feedback. Would love to hear what you’d like to see more about in WiP, so I can make it better for you.
Have a great start to your week!
