el producto #388 🚀
Apple Intelligence, AI startups funding, BeReal getting acquired, How Figma gets users to pay, Metrics reviews, Use Perplexity AI in your PM work & more
Hey friends,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$3.4B: OpenAI’s revenue is pipped to have more than doubled in less than a year, putting the yet-private AI giant on a $3.4B run rate
$2.4B: Databricks is also scaling quickly, underscoring that while many tech companies are struggling to grow, there are standouts in the market today. Databricks is now on a $2.4B run rate. It’s huge
$698M: Italian AI startup iGenius is in talks with potential investors to raise a funding round of €650M ($698M). CEO Uljan Sharka confirmed that the firm is eyeing a post-money valuation of €1.7B ($1.8B). The fundraising news comes days after it unveiled "Italia," an open-source AI model catering to financial service organizations
$650M: AI-powered market intelligence platform AlphaSense secured $650M in funding at a $4B valuation. The funding round will help AlphaSense acquire rival expert research startup Tegus for $930M
$640M: French AI startup Mistral AI has closed its Series B funding round at €600M ($640M). Its most advanced proprietary model, Mistral Large, is offered through commercial APIs along with generative AI tools like coding assistant Codestral and chatbot Le Chat
$500M: BeReal is getting acquired for $500M by game publisher Voodoo, and its CEO is stepping down
$211M: Low-cost DIY computer maker Raspberry Pi went public on the London Stock Exchange this week, with its shares initially priced at £2.80 and rising 32% to £3.70. The IPO generated £166M ($211M), making it the second-largest in UK this year
96.3%: App churn rates on iOS are growing, and day 30 churn rates now sit at 96.3%
50% of code created at Google is now AI assisted, according to a new research paper. In other words, the same amount of characters in the code are now completed with AI-based assistance as are manually typed by developers
📰 What’s going on
Spotify is launching a new feature that combines features like its AI DJ, Daylist, Blend playlist and the ‘Made For You’ playlist into a “one-stop shop full of personalised playlists, podcasts, features, and recommendations for each and every listener.” Hopefully the product teams at Spotify will also start to simplify other aspects of their UX which has become bloated over the years
Apple’s WWDC kicked off this week. Here’s the software announcements Product teams should know about:
Apple Intelligence is getting added across the Apple ecosystem. This includes genAI capabilities in Xcode for teams building Apple apps, image generation features and text summarization. All in all, it was Apple playing catch up
A new standalone password management app is to replace iCloud keychain
Generative AI emojis known as Genmojis are coming to iOS18
iPadOS is getting a new floating tab bar which can be used in iPad apps to add extra context
visionOS 2 brings new features including 3D photo enhancements and an ultrawide Mac display. Are people still using their Vision Pro devices? This thread sheds some light onto the topic
Tap to Cash, which will let users pay each other via NFC phone taps, without exchanging information. It's unclear which payment methods (just cards, or also Apple Cash wallet balances) will be enabled
YouTube is rolling out its new testing tool which will allow creators to test multiple thumbnails at the same time
Bank and card issuer Capital One partnered with global payment facilitators Adyen and Stripe to launch Direct Data Share, a free open-source solution aimed at combating fraud and enhancing real-time authorisation decisions. If Capital One detects fraud at a Stripe merchant and notices the same IP address attempting a transaction at an Adyen merchant, the system can block that transaction in real-time
📚 Good reads
The weekly metrics review - how to actually be data driven. Inconsistent definitions and misaligned expectations lead great teams to move quickly… in different directions. Elena Verna proposes a reference touchpoint to help organizations stay aligned around the metrics that matter
How Figma converts users from freemium to premium. A UX analysis of Figma’s monetization strategies by Rosie Hoggmascall
Presenteeism, the silent productivity killer, by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. “Presenteeism is working longer hours than needed and showing up even when sick. Studies suggest that presenteeism can have a greater impact than absenteeism on your business in terms of performance and productivity. But, more importantly, it can have terrible consequences in terms of mental and physical health”
Grow as a leader. Leah Tharin shares a thoughtful piece on what holds leaders back from growing further and what can they do about it:
Don’t ask others to grow when you can’t demonstrate to them that you’re willing to grow yourself
People will treat you differently because of the title you have, and not always in a good way
Good feedback is uncomfortable; foster it actively instead of being defensive
How to use Perplexity AI in your PM work, by Lenny Rachitsky. 27 examples (with actual prompts) of how Product Managers are using the AI-powered search engine today
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