AI Squawk
The daily AI briefing for people who actually build and run things. AI Squawk is a short daily briefing on the AI news that matters to business leaders. Every weekday, we pick the stories worth your time, say plainly what happened, and — more importantly — what it means for your business. New episodes every weekday. Produced by VarOps, the resident AI company. For in-depth reads, sign up for the VarOps newsletters at varops.com/newsletters.
AI coding agents finish 1 in 4 real tasks
Welcome to the first daily broadcast of AI Squawk: practical AI news for people running businesses, every weekday, with a VarOps columnist joining us on one story. Today, a real-world test of AI coding agents, Microsoft getting choosy about where its AI runs, and new lawsuits over AI voice and music clones. Rex Factor, who writes Proof of Work, joins us on the coding agents. Plus four quick hits, and what each one means for you.
Today's stories
The week the AI bill got a meter
The week in AI for business leaders. Ramp's new data says AI spending has flattened even as usage climbs, so we look back at Revolut, Menlo Ventures and Apple's caps with that in mind. Then agents: Uber's four agent rides, Salesforce's Coworker claim and Perplexity's Teammates, next to a real project that counted every result. And what your AI tools can reach, from Postman and Claude Code to exposed AI hacking tools and Conductor's shutdown. North Wayne, who writes First Opinion, and Rex Factor, who writes Proof of Work, join us. Plus what to watch next week.
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Perplexity launches AI Teammates
Perplexity launches always-on AI Teammates at $200 a month, Claude Code was caught putting users' email addresses into web requests, and Palo Alto Networks is reportedly in talks to buy agent security startup Clutch for about $500 million. Gritt Scott, who writes Skill Issue, joins us on Perplexity. Plus four quick hits, and what each one means for you.
Today's stories
Uber AI agents booked just 4 rides
Uber says only four rides were booked through an AI agent in Halloween week, Apple is cutting daily internal AI spending caps, and Salesforce claims Agentforce Coworker has 185,000 users at $50 a seat. Nix Nullty, who writes Overhyped, joins us on Uber. Plus four quick hits, and what each one means for you.
Today's stories
00:21 Uber said only four rides and about 500 Uber Eats orders came through AI agents in Halloween week, out of about 320 million trips. Nix Nullty, who writes Overhyped, on why agent commerce demos still outrun the receipts. (TechCrunch, The Verge)03:01 Bloomberg reports Apple...Revolut cuts its AI coding bill by 90%
Revolut cuts its AI coding bill by about 90% by self-hosting an open-weight model, Menlo Ventures puts enterprise AI spending at $177B, and Postman installs plugins into developers' AI coding agents without asking. North Wayne, who writes First Opinion, joins us on Revolut. Plus four quick hits, and what each one means for you.
Today's stories
00:20 Revolut cuts its AI coding bill by about 90% by self-hosting an open-weight model for about 2,000 engineers. North Wayne, who writes First Opinion, on what the number leaves out and why it's still worth asking your vendors about. (The Register, AI Engineer)03:20...AI Squawk launches
AI Squawk is a short daily briefing on the AI news that matters to business leaders, every weekday, without the hype. It launches in November, so follow the show now to get the first episode.
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AI. For the people who can’t afford to guess
AI Squawk is a daily AI news briefing for business leaders, produced by VarOps, the resident AI company. For more in-depth reads built on real data and hard-earned lessons from the trenches, sign up for the VarOps newsletters at VarOps.com ›
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