{{first_name | Hey}}, welcome back.
In today’s issue, we have Alibaba’s bet on AI infrastructure, Google’s attempt to catch up with personalized feed and Walmart’s changing strategy.
These are today's updates.
Alibaba raises $10.2B for AI as profits plunge 75%
Google lets users personalize Discover with natural language
Walmart brings in Apple Pay and Google Pay
Tools, jobs, resources, and last issue’s winning prompt ⬇️
. YouTube Think Tank.
Psychologist Shawn Achor challenges the idea that happiness comes after success, arguing that happiness can actually drive productivity and performance. A useful perspective for leaders thinking about how culture, employee wellbeing, and business outcomes connect.
Neatprompts is where enterprise teams discover what's worth paying attention to in AI. Every week, 100,000+ readers rely on us for actionable insights and practical workflows.
If your product helps businesses adopt, deploy, or scale AI, we'd love to introduce it to our audience.
. Top News.
Google is adding a natural-language control to Discover that lets users tell the feed what they want to see more or less of. From the three-dot menu on a story, users can describe topics or links in their own words, and Google says the feed will adjust and remember those preferences.
Now, users won’t have to manage interests one topic at a time. A request such as wanting road-trip videos without camping content gives Google a much more specific signal than the existing feedback controls.
With this, Discover becomes a more user-controlled distribution channel. Content teams can expect audience preferences to play a bigger role in what gets surfaced, instead of just content and headlines.
Walmart is beginning its rollout of Apple Pay, Google Pay and other contactless payments at select U.S. Walmart and Sam's Club locations. The company plans to reach all U.S. stores and clubs by the end of 2026, with fuel stations following by mid-2027.
The interesting part is what Walmart is giving up. For years, it pushed customers toward Walmart Pay and its QR-code checkout instead of adopting NFC payments. The new system still keeps Walmart Pay in place, but removes the need for customers to use Walmart's proprietary payment flow.
Alibaba is raising HK$80 billion ($10.2 billion) through a new share placement, with all of the proceeds earmarked for its AI capabilities and infrastructure. The 710 million new shares were priced at HK$112.70, an 8.4% discount to the previous Hong Kong close, sending Alibaba shares down about 8% in early trading.
The timing is notable. Alibaba's latest quarter showed net profit falling 75%, primarily because of AI-related spending, while the company says demand has allowed it to shorten the expected payback period on its AI investment from three years to 2.5 years.
This goes on to show that AI infrastructure spending is increasingly becoming a capital-allocation question rather than a technology decision.
. Signals.
Tools
Router by Ramp: Save tokens and money
Epho: Run Claude Code, Codex or Opencode in cloud with your repo
Maccess: Control your Mac from iPhone from anywhere
Resources
. Poll.
Choose the prompt you want us to publish next
. Market.
Funding
Velaura AI raised $110M to build energy-efficient AI infrastructure.
Firmus raised $2B to expand AI factory infrastructure.
Roles in AI
Executive Director, Frontier AI at Amgen
Director, AI Innovation Lead at Citi
Trends
AI agents now consume nearly 5x more tokens than humans on OpenRouter, with agentic usage surging 14x since February, according to OpenRouter data cited by a16z.
. Prompt of the Day.
AI Executive Email Triage
When to use this?
Use this prompt at the start or end of your day to turn a crowded executive inbox into a prioritized action list.
You are an executive communications and productivity assistant supporting a busy enterprise leader.
Review my inbox and create an Executive Email Triage Brief that helps me quickly understand what needs my attention and what can wait.
My role:
[Job title / function]
My priorities:
[Top 3-5 current priorities]
Key people / teams:
[Important executives, customers, partners, teams, or stakeholders]
Review the emails provided and for each important email identify:
1. Sender
2. Subject
3. What they need from me
4. Why it matters
5. Urgency:
- Critical: Needs attention today
- High: Needs attention within 1-2 days
- Medium: Can wait a few days
- Low: No immediate action required
6. Recommended action:
- Reply
- Delegate
- Review
- Approve
- Schedule a meeting
- No action
7. Suggested deadline
8. Key context or dependencies
9. Whether this requires executive judgment or can be handled by someone else
Do not treat every email as equally important. Prioritize based on business impact, strategic importance, customer impact, revenue, risk, deadlines, and whether my involvement is genuinely required.
Then create:
### Executive Priority Queue
Give me the 5-10 emails I should look at first, ranked by priority.
For each, explain in one sentence why it needs my attention.
### Quick Replies
Identify emails that can be answered with a short response and draft a concise, professional reply for each.
Do not make commitments, promises, or decisions that are not supported by the email or my stated priorities.
### Delegate
Identify emails that should be handled by someone else.
For each, suggest:
- Who should own it
- Why
- What I should tell them
### Waiting / Follow-up
Identify emails where someone else owes me an action, decision, document, or update.
Include:
- Who I'm waiting on
- What I'm waiting for
- Suggested follow-up date
### Approvals & Decisions
Identify emails requiring my approval, decision, or executive judgment.
For each, summarize:
- Decision required
- Options
- Key trade-offs
- Recommended next step
### Ignore / Low Priority
Group newsletters, FYIs, routine notifications, and emails that don't require my attention.
Do not summarize these individually unless something appears unusually important.
### Executive Brief
End with:
- 3 things I need to know
- 3 things I need to do
- 3 things I can delegate
Keep the output concise and decision-oriented. Don't summarize emails just for the sake of summarizing them. Focus on what requires my attention, what can be delegated, and what could have meaningful business consequences.Get more such prompts in the Prompting Playbook (free for you)
Stay curious, {{first_name | reader}}
PS. If you missed yesterday’s issue, you can find it here.