{{first_name | Leader}}, welcome back.
AI is getting pulled in three directions at once. Easier for non-technical teams, bigger bets from long-term investors, and faster adoption in open communities.
These are today’s updates.
Explore agentic AI for software delivery at the GitLab Transcend virtual event.*
Anthropic adds Cowork plugins for non-coders
Waymo targets $16B funding at $110B
OpenClaw open-source AI agents gain traction
Tools, resources, and a prompt to turn a plan into a weekly tracking system. ⬇️
Join GitLab Transcend for an exclusive virtual event exploring the true potential of agentic AI for software delivery.
See how teams are solving real-world challenges by modernizing development workflows with AI, get a sneak peek of GitLab’s upcoming product roadmap, watch tech demos from product experts, and share your feedback directly with GitLab product experts.
Anthropic expanded Cowork with agentic plugins that let non-technical teams automate real work using Claude. Marketing, legal, sales, and support teams can create task-specific plugins that connect Claude to internal tools, documents, and workflows without writing code.
Plugins can handle actions like drafting and reviewing content, pulling data from systems, responding to tickets, or preparing reports. Several plugins are open-sourced, and Cowork is currently available as a research preview for paid Claude users. The goal is to move agents beyond engineers and into everyday business functions.
Alphabet’s Waymo is reportedly raising up to $16 billion at a valuation close to $110 billion, with Alphabet leading the round alongside large institutional investors. The funding follows the steady expansion of Waymo’s fully driverless ride-hailing services across U.S. cities and increased operational scale.
Unlike many autonomy startups, Waymo already runs commercial services, making this round less about experimentation and more about long-term infrastructure, fleet expansion, and regulatory execution in autonomous transportation.
OpenClaw, formerly known as Clawdbot, has grown rapidly into an open-source AI assistant ecosystem with more than 100,000 GitHub stars and a broad contributor base. The project focuses on modular agents, shared skills, and community-built extensions.
One experimental component, Moltbook, explores how AI agents can interact socially using shared capabilities. While the ecosystem is evolving quickly, known security risks like prompt injection and the overall complexity mean OpenClaw is currently better suited for experimentation and research rather than production deployment.
Productivity Tools
✏️ SketchTo - Converts images to sketches and sketches back to images using AI.
🧠 Liminary - Saves and recalls anything instantly with AI-powered memory.
🎬 Unscreen - Removes backgrounds and objects from videos automatically.
🎨 GoCrazy - Creates AI videos, images, and voices in seconds.
Get featured tomorrow: How do you use AI for business/personally? Interesting stories will be shared with 100K curious readers.
Useful Resources
Discover the potential of agentic AI for software delivery at the GitLab Transcend virtual event.*
How to build memory-driven AI agents using short-term, long-term, and episodic memory.
Why the best AI startups handle the training and leave agent quality to product teams.
Three clear signals that tell you when it’s time to delegate a task to an AI agent.
A quick guide to choosing the right email marketing automation platform.
What would make you double down on AI investment?
💰 Funding
RobCo raised $100M (Series C) to scale physical AI robotics across the US and Europe.
Northslope raised $22M (Series A) to build mission-specific, Palantir-native AI applications.
💼 Roles in AI
🐦 Clear your misunderstandings
Turn This Plan Into a Weekly Tracking System
When to use this?
Once an action plan exists and you want to ensure it actually moves week to week.
Convert the plan below into a simple weekly tracking system.
Requirements:
Identify what needs to be tracked weekly vs what doesn’t
Define 1–2 signals per action that show progress or risk
Suggest a weekly check-in format (questions to ask, not a meeting agenda)
Flag when leadership should step in
Output sections:
Weekly metrics to track
Weekly questions to ask
Escalation triggers
Keep it minimal and execution-focused.
Plan:
[paste the action plan]P.S. Get more such prompts in the Prompting Playbook (free for you)
Q. What signals tell you AI is actually working?
Stay curious, {{first_name | leaders}}
PS. If you missed yesterday’s issue, you can find it here.