The ad-ification of intelligence, Bezos' new fund and West Village girls

Weekly Exhale

ChatGPT will just be another ad platform soon. I feel silly that it didn't hit me sooner. Given the hysteria around AI right now, it's easy to lose your bearings. I heard this week that seed rounds in the Bay have gotten insanely expensive. And the stories emerging are so absurd, they're practically comic.

Literally, I'm watching Mark Zuckerberg on comedian Theo Von's podcast, and Zuck is now wearing Meta Wayfarer glasses. I'm no fashion expert, but the classic Ray-Ban silhouette paired with a Skims tee, gold chain and a $895, 500 Gruebel Forsey? It's like Risky Business meets Biggie Smalls.

Von asks how billionaires do date night. Zuck explains that his wife, Priscilla, is pretty chill. Then starts talking about how he and Daniel Arsham collaborated on the seven-foot statue of her. "She's a chillionaire," Von quips, deadpan.

If it's not an actual comedy show, it might as well be.

Kingpins Andreessen Horowitz rebranded this week, and the results would have given a therapist a field day. Known by their numeronym, a16z, they got rich investing in Facebook and generally wander around like tech-gods. The new livery is an Art Deco gold coin featuring a cyborg holding up the globe. It's like something between an Ayn Rand novel and the Capitol seal from The Hunger Games.

I half expect their next investment meetings to take place in Próspera, their real-life gated "freedom city" off the coast of Honduras. Founders choose weapons and pitch to the death for a pre-seed round.

So all the while, it was easy for me to miss that OpenAI is becoming the next new, old-fashioned advertising platform.

At some point, it's just venture economics. So much money goes in, so you have to start being less inventive about how it comes back out. And ChatGPT has an attention advantage that the others don't. I checked my screen time yesterday. Without realising, ChatGPT ranked in my top five. Same usage as LinkedIn. Twice that of Instagram.

Open AI now claims 400 million weekly active users, on track for a billion this year. Paid subscriptions are growing fast, but sit at just 20 million. So, how do you repay the techno-gods when you're giving out more than you're getting back?

A simple, two-point plan:

1. Start with a social mission to transform all humanity.

2. Launch ads.

So I tested the theory. I typed What’s the best washing powder for newborn baby clothes? The answer came wrapped in a neat row of shoppable panels, the kind you see at the top of Google. This feature launched quietly in March.

A tiny disclaimer read: ChatGPT chooses products independently. But that can't be true for a model trained on an internet skewed with paid listings. And brands that blocked OpenAI from crawling their sites are now learning the cost of invisibility.

Think about it. ChatGPT delivers the dream of personalised media, which digital always promised before social media morphed into television with better targeting. ChatGPT is the ultimate personal shopper. It's your friend. Your therapist. It flatters you. Mirrors your tone. Knows what you need. And exactly which version you should buy.

Remember when Zuck used to wear grey hoodies and told us Facebook was a "social mission to make the world more open and connected"? That was the S-1. Today, 98% of Meta's revenue comes from ads. Google's mission to "organise the world's information" is 77% powered by paid ranking.

And Microsoft, OpenAI's strategic investor, could use a better foothold in the attention economy. LinkedIn and Bing only make around $30 billion from advertising. They've gotta pump those numbers up.

Confusingly, OpenAI has abandoned plans to become a traditional for-profit company and instead will incorporate as a public benefit corporation. But I think that's mostly to deflect Elon Musk suing them for 'bad-faith' tactics. The bigger news is that OpenAI just hired Fidji Simo, who is currently CEO of Instacart, sits on the board of Shopify and previously ran monetisation at Facebook.

At least I'll sleep a little better knowing AI is standing down from destroying civilisation. Ad revenue needs a large addressable market for CryoGlow LED face masks and collagen gummies. Why kill your best customers?

A few times a week, I take meetings in the cafés of Mayfair. I have a favourite spot that catches the early sun. It’s mostly quiet before lunch, which makes it the perfect place to meet.

Fairly often, I see the same man. Blue suit. Blue tie. A little older, with that face you instinctively trust. I don’t know what he does, but it involves a suit.

And despite the hour—10 a.m. or earlier—he always orders a large glass of white wine. Occasionally with ice cubes clinking inside. He doesn’t look like he’s celebrating. He just sits alone, eyes inches from his phone. Staring into the glow. Scrolling through something. A calendar? A LinkedIn feed?

In my head, he’s a symbol. Of how connected and disconnected things ended up. Read some early technology manifestos and you'll soon learn this wasn't how it was supposed to be.

In the late 1960s, Silicon Valley was part of the counterculture. To get a feel for it, you don’t need to look much further than the Whole Earth Catalog, created by a Stanford biologist named Stewart Brand. Often described as “Google in paperback,” 35 years before Google existed.

Back then, computers were locked in corporate mainframes. Brand imagined they could become personal tools for liberation, creativity, and ecological living. He lived during the largest wave of commune-building in U.S. history, away from bureaucracy towards psychedelics. The Catalog had everything you needed—books, equipment, early computers, a composting toilet or a course on feminist theory.

Famously, the final edition featured a romantic photo of an open road and rolling hills with the words: Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Steve Jobs borrowed the line. Brand later said Jobs used it to manage the weight of the wealth and power accumulating around him "It was a way to keep himself two-minded about it," Brand claimed.

Brand didn't run ads in the Catalog, but made millions from it and gave most of it away. By his admission, most of the engineering work behind the early internet was done by safe people in blue suits and ties, using government money. By 1971, counterculture had moved to a hilltop outside Rome, where Coca-Cola filmed a TV ad of hippies singing "I'd like to buy the world a Coke."

The Valley always promises a better world. And it often delivers it. But it also turns the PC into PowerPoint. The screen in your palm into a portal of endless ads. And communities into content funnels.

It's a reminder to stay in two minds about the power we're building. Keep a little of that curiosity. That resistance. That spirit of the open road. And to remember, our operating system runs on something far more profound: Love and connection.

So here's to suit-guy with his phone and his Chablis at 10am. Who doesn't pretend to be a UFC fighter, or a sculptor, or a saviour of the species. Who shows up as he is. Probably gets things done. Even if he needs to alter his consciousness a little to soften the day ahead.

Maybe he's fine. Maybe he's not. But I've gotten to recognise him and feel faintly like I know him. So I worry that one day I'll look up and he won't be there.

And I'll be left with the question I never asked: Hey. How you doing?

Breakthroughs aren't always code, a prompt or an AI-powered personal shopper. But noticing someone and a few words when they needed them most.

Let's rise together with every issue. ♡

Market Movements

UK and US make trade deal | BBC

Bank of England urges EU trade ties | The Guardian

U.S. Fed warns of risks, leaves rates steady | Wall Street Journal

Brand Beat

Pepsi no longer in the top 3 drinks | Vice

Weight Watchers goes bust as Ozempic takes hold | BBC

Gymshark recreates Met Gala out of gym kit | Retail Week

Kohl’s CEO fired for giving work to partner | Wall Street Journal

Mattel plans price increases on US toys | Wall Street Journal

Dupe culture is more resonant than ever | Marketing Brew

Group M to become WPP Media | More About Advertising

Coca-Cola CEO: When global is crazy, focus on local | MarketingWeek

Sweetgreen CEO on robots and MAHA | New York Times

Starbucks rolls out iconic compostable cup | World Coffee Portal

Heineken investment Served adds four new cocktails to lineup | The Grocer

What it means to be a West Village girl - influencer reacts | Miranda McKeon

Trump orders 100% tariffs on foreign movies to save Hollywood | Reuters

Tesla’s Board denies looking for new CEO | BBC

Airbnb rolls out AI service | TechCrunch

Google launches anti-Black Mirror movie initiative | Mashable

Jaguar searches for new agency after derided rebrand | The Telegraph

Instacart launches Fizz, a new way to order party food | Instacart

Starting Up

We refuse to build another beige baby brand | Startups

Wonderskin secures $50m series A | Business of Fashion

Why so many food startups fail | The Grocer

The case for founder-led sales | Scaling With Soul

This week’s trending new brands | Thingstesting

Tech Tidbits

OpenAI has created an academy | OpenAI

OpenAI also buys a coding startup Windsurf for $3bn | Bloomberg

OpenAI hires Insacart CEO, Fidji Simo | LinkedIn

Gemini AI made available to under-13s | The Verge

Alphabet slips as Apple considers adding AI search | yahoo!finance

Apple App Store loses in court and is cracked open | YouTube

Goodbye Skype, I’ll never forget you | The Guardian

Amazon Zoox robotaxis recalled after crash | CNBC

Venture Vibes

Coatue is a $1bn new tech fund backed by Bezos | Wall Street Journal

Tori Birch Foundation to add $1bn to economy via female entrepreneurs | Fortune

Maker of AI ‘vibe coding’ app Cursor hits $9bn | Financial Times

Door Dash’s Deliveroo swoop is pricey but timely | Reuters

Mycelium-based Meati raised $450m, sold for $4m | The Plant Base

Design Driven

Figma launches Figma Draw, here’s the brand ad | YouTube

a16z’s new Ayn Rand style rebrand | Fast Company

Barcelona School of Arts launches new AI masters | It’s Nice That

Happiness

The bliss of a quieter ego | The Atlantic

New physics paper confirms we’re not in a simulation | Frontiers

Check out the Whole Earth Catalog online | Wired

Weekly meditation: Kill weeds to feed the vision | Retreat & Rise Up

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Stay gold 🙏🏻