el producto #412 🚀
AI tools to generate UI, iPhone 17 Air, xAI's chatbot, WhatsApp voice transcripts, Zoom rebrand, Uber Scaled Solutions, AI interviewers, Getting Active Users right & more
Hi folks 👋
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto
🎰 The week in figures
1B: SumUp has hit a remarkable milestone, processing over 1B transactions annually across its global merchant base. The fintech company has evolved significantly from its payments roots, with over 1M customers now using SumUp Business Account as part of its expanded multi-product ecosystem
$260M: priced at the top of its range, Pony.AI went public this week at $13 per share. That means the Chinese self-driving company raised $260M from its 20M share IPO
57% of the world’s population are now connected to the mobile internet. But adoption rates have flatlined YoY. Over 2B people still do not own a mobile phone
📰 What’s going on
iPhone 17 Air coming soon. The rumored 6mm-thick iPhone will feature a 6.6-inch display, A19 chip, and Apple's 5G modem, launching September 2025
Google vs AI rivals. As it prepares to defend against the DOJ’s antitrust case remedies proposal, Google subpoenas OpenAI, Perplexity and Microsoft, seeking financial, user, and licensing data
YouTube is planning to roll out AI-powered dubbing that will automatically translate videos into Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese. The feature will be automatically enabled by default. More companies are waking up to the power of AI-powered translation as a powerful internationalization strategy
xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup reportedly plans to release a standalone AI chatbot and Language Model app to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT as early as December
OpenAI is reported to be considering developing a proprietary web browser but isn’t close to releasing it just yet. The prospect of an AI-first browser is starting to gain momentum and the first cohort of AI companies are now expanding their product offerings outside of their initial value propositions as models start to become commoditized
Anthropic has unveiled a new open-source protocol called Model Context Protocol (MCP). It’s a new standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives which includes content repositories, business tools and data environments. Pre-built integrations for Google Drive, Slack, GitHub and more are available on launch and payments company Block is an early partner for the new protocol
Voice transcripts are coming for WhatsApp messages. Ideal for users who hate listening to long winded voice notes
Threads is testing a new feature which will allow users to set the “Following” feed as their default. As BlueSky continues to grow, Threads is keen to differentiate itself. Giving users control over their feed preferences is one way to do that
Zoom is rebranding itself - and is ditching the word “video” from its legal name. Zoom 2.0 will be an “AI-first work platform for human connection”. But is it a pivot too late? The company’s stock is still down a massive ~85% from pandemic highs
Uber is investing heavily in its AI data labelling division, Scaled Solutions. The labelling teams will work on data for Uber Rides and Eats including classifying objects for local mapping and digitizing food menus. Uber is also planning - for the first time - to sell this service to third parties. Early clients include the game developer Niantic Inc which is most famous for its Pokémon Go series. A fine example of productizing internal services as a new revenue stream
Spotify has built a series of new tools for authors who publish their books on the platform, including analytics tools and promo cards which offer assets designed for sharing across social media. An immersive “Follow-Along” experience will give users a visual experience which complements the audio. Spotify is also rolling out a new author profile feature early next year which will allow users to follow their favorite author - potentially boosting its network effects
Coinbase is doubling down on payments with plans to grow through acquisitions and new revenue streams. The US's top crypto exchange recently snapped up Utopia Labs, a payments startup, and might pursue more deals to supercharge its offerings. For everyday users, Coinbase is crafting an "everything app," combining crypto trading, holding, and payments
Revolut reveals 2025 vision, with AI Assistant, mortgages, and ATMs on the horizon. At the Revolutionaries event in London, Revolut celebrated 50M customers and revealed big plans for 2025
📚 Good reads
The rise of AI Voice Interviewers. Companies spend a ton of time and money on interviews - often with low ROI. And, candidates suffer through long and painful processes. In this piece, A16z’s Olivia Moore explains how AI voice powered interviews might transform the entire process
How LinkedIn’s engineering team built its generative AI stack. LinkedIn’s GenAI application tech stack embraces AI-first development, lays a solid foundation for building GenAI apps efficiently and responsibly. In this post, the Product and engineering teams who worked on it explain how they did it
4 AI tools to generate UI. Xinran Ma tested 4 AI tools for UI generation based on a complex prompt related to mobile app design. A useful analysis to show you what’sz possible with each tool
Miro vs. FigJam: how their AI assistants stack up. Another useful and inspiring post to help you make the most of Miro’s and Figma’s assistants. I had tried Miro’s, but I still didn’t know half of what it can do, and while it still has some big room for improvement, it’s pretty cool
What's an Active User? And why getting it right is important to revenue forecasting, by CJ Gustafson. Typically, “active user” is defined by the bare minimum activity (like logging in), but apps like Strava go beyond login metrics, requiring user engagement with core app features - they prioritize WAUs based on community engagement patterns
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