{{first_name | Leader}}, welcome back.
The AI story is getting more commercial. How companies defend their advantage, how platforms pay for scale, and how quickly models respond are all under the spotlight. These are today’s updates
Run unlimited coding agents without slowing your laptop or juggling tabs.*
Databricks CEO says AI reshapes SaaS moats
OpenAI tests ads inside ChatGPT
Anthropic launches faster Claude mode
Tools, resources, and a prompt to design a lightweight internal AI assistant. ⬇️
Running multiple agents locally works… until it doesn’t. Tabs explode, laptops slow down, and cross-repo work becomes a mess.
Oz lets you run unlimited coding agents in isolated cloud environments, all orchestrated from one panel, with setup in under ten minutes.
Databricks crossed a $5.4B revenue run rate, with AI products driving much of the momentum. CEO Ali Ghodsi pushed back on the idea that AI replaces SaaS, arguing instead that it expands usage by making complex systems easier to interact with. Tools like Genie lower the interface barrier, while newer products like Lakebase are seeing faster early adoption than Databricks’ original warehouse.
OpenAI started testing ads inside ChatGPT for Free and Go tier users in the U.S., while keeping paid and enterprise plans ad-free. Ads are clearly labeled, appear at the bottom of chats, and rely on topic-level signals rather than user data. Users can dismiss ads or adjust personalization settings.
Anthropic introduced a new fast mode for Claude Opus 4.6, delivering roughly 2.5× faster responses at a higher price point. The feature is currently in research preview with limited access and temporary discounts. Anthropic is offering a 50% introductory discount through February 16, bringing the premium down to 3X.
Productivity Tools
🔒 Norton Neo – Context-aware, trust-first AI built directly into your browser.*
🔁 Infinitylooper - Create seamless infinite video loops using AI.
📊 Trullion - Automates accounting and audit workflows with AI.
🤖 Moltbot - Open-source, self-hosted AI assistant that runs tasks across chat platforms.
Get featured tomorrow: How do you use AI for business/personally? Interesting stories will be shared with 100K curious readers.
One Chart That Matters
Software pricing is moving from fixed licenses to usage-based models as AI increases variable costs.
If budgets tightened tomorrow, what would happen to AI spend?
💰 Funding
Gather AI raised $40M (Series B) to scale AI-driven logistics intelligence globally.
Alinea raised $22.5M to expand its AI-powered financial planning platform.
💼 Roles in AI
🐦 Cheat Code for Claude
Design a Lightweight Internal AI Assistant
When to use this?
When teams keep asking for the same data, updates, or explanations, and you want an AI assistant to handle it.
I want to design a lightweight internal AI assistant for a specific task.
Your job:
Define what the assistant should handle (questions, summaries, lookups)
List inputs it needs (docs, links, dashboards, FAQs)
Define clear boundaries (what it should not answer or do)
Propose a simple setup using tools we already have
Give 3 example questions the assistant should answer well
Keep it practical. Assume no custom engineering.
Task to automate:
[describe the recurring questions or requests]P.S. Get more such prompts in the Prompting Playbook (free for you)
Q. Where is AI creating tension inside your leadership team?
Stay curious, {{first_name | leaders}}
PS. If you missed yesterday’s issue, you can find it here.