el producto #384 🚀
Thinner iPhones, Netflix growth, GPT-4o, New Google AI products, Growth hacking, No-code MVPs, Human curiosity in the age of AI, New Uber products & more
Hey friends,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$27B: AI startups in the Bay Area raised $27B+ in 2023, more than 50% of global AI funding, up from $14B in 2022, when the region accounted for 29% of all AI funding
$7.5B: AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave secured $7.5B in debt financing to expand its cloud data centers. The announcement comes shortly after CoreWeave finalized a $1.1B funding round that values the AI cloud provider at around $19B
$950M: Uber announces plans to acquire Delivery Hero's Foodpanda business in Taiwan for $950M in an all-cash deal, expected to close in the first half of 2025
40M: Netflix's ad-supported tier has soared to 40 million global monthly active users, nearly doubling from 23M in January, with 40% of new signups in regions offering the ad tier opting for the cheaper plan. This move, combined with a crackdown on password-sharing, is part of Netflix's strategy to increase revenue amid a slowdown in subscriber growth, now totaling 270M worldwide
157K: Anthropic's new iOS app featuring Claude 3 garnered 157,000 global downloads in its first week, trailing ChatGPT's 480,000 U.S. installs in the same timeframe
15%: OpenAI's partnership with Reddit, utilizing its content for AI chatbots, led to a 15% surge in Reddit's shares (RDDT 0.00%↑ ) during after-hours trading, aiming to supply dependable data for advanced AI models. Amid the AI boom, social media platforms are increasingly exploring strategies to monetize their data resources
💸 Q1 results
Alibaba: Q1 revenue up 6.6% YoY to ~$30.7B, above $30.4B est., a ~$452M net income, down 86% YoY from ~$3.2B in Q4 2023, and announces a $4B dividend
Nubank: 99.3M customers, an increase of 20.2M YoY and 5.4M QoQ.The number of active customers stands at 82.6M, up by 17.7M YoY and 4.6M QoQ.The activity rate is at 83.2%, showing a slight increase of 0.1pp QoQ and 1.1 pp YoY. Nubank's revenue reached $2.7B, a 64% YoY increase. Gross profit surged to $1.2B, up 76% YoY, with a GP margin of 43%. Net income skyrocketed to $378.8M, a 160% YoY increase
Tencent: Q1 revenue up 6% YoY to ~$22B, above ~$21.95B est., and net profit up 62% YoY to ~$5.8B, above ~$4.8B est., boosted by new WeChat monetization
📰 What’s going on
OpenAI announced GPT-4o, its latest and most advanced AI model with text, vision, and audio capabilities. OpenAI's new ChatGPT voice assistant jokes, chides, apologizes, pretends to blush, and deals with interruptions
At its annual I/O developer conference, Google unveiled several AI products, including new search and chat features and AI hardware for cloud customers. Updates to Gemini 1.5 Pro allow it to handle larger datasets while introducing the smaller Gemini 1.5 Flash AI model that caters to quicker tasks.
Google introduced "Veo" for high-definition video creation, "Imagen 3" for high-quality text-to-image conversion, and "Audio Overviews" for generating audio discussions from text
Google rolled out "AI Overviews" to U.S. users of its main search engine, marking its largest overhaul to Search in years. AI Overviews allows for intricate queries and assistant-like planning functions, integrating images and videos for a multimodal experience
Google Workspace's "AI Teammate" will curate searchable collections of work spanning different documents and messages
Google’s DeepMind is developing Project Astra, a prototype AI assistant set to debut in Gemini, offering real-time conversational support akin to Marvel's J.A.R.V.I.S.
Additionally, the firm introduced Trillium, its latest TPU for complex AI tasks, slated for cloud release in late 2024, and reaffirmed its partnership with Nvidia for advanced AI hardware
AI startup Anthropic hired Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger as its Chief Product Officer
At its annual Go-Get showcase, Uber unveiled new product updates to improve the user experience and draw in more riders, including Uber Shuttle, which lets users reserve affordable shuttle seats to different destinations from select U.S. locations. The Uber Caregiver feature also allows caregivers to book rides and order supplies for those they care for, with applicable insurance benefits to reduce costs. Uber Eats will now feature Costco products, offering discounts for members and non-members and extra savings for Uber One subscription members. Users can now schedule shared rides in advance, offering savings of approximately 25% compared to standard UberX fares
Meta will discontinue its Workplace app, an alternative to Slack and Microsoft Teams, in mid-2026 to focus on AI and metaverse technologies. Workplace will be available to users until September 2025 and shut down completely in June 2026
Apple is reportedly developing a "significantly thinner" iPhone for launch next year. The device could be part of the iPhone 17 lineup, possibly replacing the "Plus" version in the series
Apple announced built-in eye tracking for users to navigate iPhones and iPads with their eyes. The tool for users with physical disabilities is among the new accessibility features coming to Apple's software platforms this year
Apple will start selling its mixed-reality headset outside of the U.S.The company has flown hundreds of international store employees to Cupertino, California, to train them how to demonstrate the $3,499 Vision Pro to customers
Strava taps AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, unveils ‘family’ plan, dark mode and more
YouTube formally launches YouTube Select Creator Takeovers, to let advertisers buy out the inventory on channels representing the top 1% of YouTube content
📚 Good reads
Human curiosity in the age of AI, by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. The future of human curiosity in the age of AI is not a zero-sum game. “By combining human and AI curiosity, we can leverage their unique strengths to compound our creative potential. The intuitive nature of human curiosity can work in tandem with the computative power of AI curiosity to accelerate discoveries and drive innovation”
“Why I’m unquitting full time roles.” In a plot twist, after sharing her approach to quitting full time roles and becoming a solopreneur, Elena Verna shares what led her to join Dropbox full time. Beyond this recent decision, the article delves into what has led Elena to multiple switches during her amazing career. An inspiring read talking about the importance of mental health, relationships, and wise decisions
How AI will reinvent Marketing. Andrew Chen explores what happens in a world of infinite labor, infinite content, and mass personalization. AI in marketing is expected to transform strategies through real-time data insights, personalized customer interactions, and advertising via AI companions - fundamentally reshaping how brands engage with consumers and execute campaigns swiftly and dynamically
10 years after "Growth Hacking.” Andrew Chen has been inspired these last few days! Another great article by him, this time on what's changed and what's new since his viral article on growth hacking. A great review of the current state of Growth
A no-code approach to building MVPs. Hardik Chawla, Product Lead at Amazon, shares how no-code and low-code development platforms can help PMs to build and launch MVPs without extensive coding knowledge. Includes real examples and few tools you can use
Untrapping Product Teams. David Pereira, frequently present on this section, has just published his first book. As he says, it’s the anti-BS Product book; no fluff, just real stuff: “Read this book if you want to learn what breaks product teams and how to act today for a better tomorrow”
That’s all for this week. As usual, feel free to reach out and share your thoughts by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Thanks for your support!
Angel