AI Sets Its Sights on Email
Google Sics Gemini on Gmail • Apple Card's New Money Man • ChatGPT Health • OpenAI's 2026 Roadmap • Samsung's Wild Profit Ride • Elon on Bezos • Team USA's Kits
AI is divisive. Email is hated. If ever there was a space for the companies building the new technology to prove their worth to the masses… (Yes, I realize I’m sending this over email.)
📧 Gmail’s First Lunge Towards Stabbing Email to Death with AI
Give me ‘AI Inbox’ yesterday Google...
I Note…
💳 Apple Card Gets a New Home
A legitimate "finally". JPMorgan will take over as the partner on Apple’s credit card from Goldman Sachs, which clearly wanted out of the partnership starting two years ago. Now they just have to wait another, um, two years until JPM and Apple can fully transition everyone over. The most wild thing about this saga remains the fact that Apple Card apparently has a higher exposure to subprime borrowers and (undoubtedly related) a higher than average delinquency rate. That sort of flies in the face of the conventional wisdom about Apple’s customer base. But it probably points more to Goldman/Apple fucking up the vetting process here mixed with Apple’s very customer-friendly rules for the card. And since Apple wasn’t going to budge on those it took a while to find a new partner — and a very healthy discount on the big book value ($20B) they would take over. I’m just happy they’re keeping Mastercard as the payment network, as I already have too many Visa cards (and don’t need another AMEX, which remains more problematic for travel in various places). [WSJ 🔒]
💊 AI Health by ChatGPT
Undoubtedly a smart sector for OpenAI to fully go after — likely just ahead of their rivals doing the same. Including, yes, best frenemy Microsoft. They were obviously teeing this up via some fairly wild natural usage numbers with regard to health conversations in ChatGPT, then the new product work leaked, so we’re getting all of this a bit premature perhaps. Still, it sounds like OpenAI is saying all the right things about this initiative — namely the focus on extra protections once you start talking about health related topics (once you get access to the new, dedicated area of ChatGPT — which people in Europe probably won’t for a long, long time thanks to regulations). And yes, the service can pull from your previous chats, but it’s a one-way street — your conversations won’t flow back into "regular" ChatGPT (nor will they be training on such data, which you’d obviously hope, but they still have to clarify!). The gut reaction will be that people won’t trust AI with such things, but again, people already are, so… Worth reading Fidji Simo’s own thoughts on the initiative as well since health hits especially close to home for her. [OpenAI]
🗺️ OpenAI’s 2026 Roadmap
Speaking of Simo, her post outlining the product roadmap for the company this year isn’t too surprising, but there’s clearly a big emphasis on gaining more enterprise traction. Why? Sutton’s Law. We’re also clearly still doing the one-up move, at least from a branding perspective: forget simple AI assistants, ChatGPT will be the "super-assistant". Oh, and "personal" too — hear that, Zuck? Codex will clearly be a focus as well as OpenAI will need to continue to combat the narrative that Anthropic might have the better business as both start to aim for IPOs… [Fidji Simo]
💰 Samsung’s Record Profits Are Not About Smartphones
Analysts had been forecasting an incredible 160% y/y jump in Q4 profit. Instead, the numbers came in with a 208% jump. Wild. But especially wild considering that we’re only a year and a quarter removed from the very public apology the company issued after missing earnings in late 2024. Why did they miss? Competition in the memory business — the same business that is now fueling this incredible growth. As for the smartphone business? That was so yesterday. And falling. Samsung is a high-speed memory company now. It’s enough to make you wonder if Apple shouldn’t have some sort of secondary business that could benefit from this unprecedented spend on all things AI infrastructure. Samsung’s stock has more than doubled in the past year, Apple? Well, Google just passed them to become the second most valuable company on the planet… [Bloomberg 🔒]
I Quote…
"I think Jeff is a bit of a tool and Satya is not, so I slightly prefer Microsoft, but I hate their marketing dept."
— Elon Musk in a 2016 message to Sam Altman, talking about which cloud partner OpenAI should work with. Um, did Musk directly lead to Microsoft’s eventual investment (after he cut bait, leaving OpenAI in a precarious funding position) — sure sounds like it here! Imagine if Amazon hadn’t been "dicking" OpenAI around on terms in Musk’s estimation… (he undoubtedly already disliked Bezos over the SpaceX/Blue Origin competition). Anyway, agreed re: Microsoft marketing.
Asides…
Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016 for $27B. Revenue last year was $17B. So quick comp math would make the service now worth something like $125B - $150B. Not a bad decade… (Not to mention how much the data/information is worth to Microsoft for any AI initiatives now…) [WSJ 🔒]
China may be about to approve NVIDIA’s H200 chips for purchase as soon as this quarter. [Bloomberg 🔒]
As such, Jensen Huang has "fired up" production of the chips. [FT 🔒]
Wait, not so fast, as the Chinese government may have issued a halt on such sales, at least temporarily. [Information 🔒]
Well, any company may be fine as long as they aren’t military or government related — or state-owned. This… might be an issue (as it is for Apple and others trying to do enterprise sales in the country). [Bloomberg 🔒]
Little surprise that NVIDIA is demanding full payment upfront (and no refunds) for anyone buying in China given the constant chaos here. [Reuters]
Speaking of China, they’re reviewing Meta’s Manus deal, even though Manus left the country for Singapore last summer. It almost feels like they sort of have to lest "Singapore Washing" pick up steam. Will this be yet another piece in the NVIDIA/TikTok/US/China jigsaw? Regardless, Lina Khan would be proud. [FT 🔒]
Polymarket is disputing the payout for bets made around the Nicolás Maduro situation, arguing that the US didn’t technically invade Venezuela. What a strange new world this is… Also, there are going to be a million issues like this with such markets. The world is not so black and white, nor does it seem that way… [FT 🔒]
Discord has filed for their IPO, which could happen in March — 5 years after they turned down a $12B offer from Microsoft and raised more money valuing them at $15B — but the world is quite different now, and they may be valued at $5B - $6B as a public company if comps are any indicator here… [Bloomberg 🔒]
Frodo Lives! Well, in the upcoming Hunt for Gollum movie at least. The next question is if Andy Serkis gets the rest of the band back together. Can Viggo Mortensen possibly say no? [ScreenRant]
Just a point of appreciation for the fact that Ian McKellen is 86 years old and will be playing Magneto again later year year and Gandalf again next…
I Spy…
The USA World Cup home kit looks… pretty awesome, actually.
