el producto #434 🚀
Big tech Q1 earnings, AI "feature inflation," Pricing optimizations, Anthropic integrations, Meta AI app, ChatGPT shopping, Duolingo's AI mandate & more
Hi friends 👋
Happy weekend, and welcome to a fresh el producto
🎰 The week in figures
$1.4T: Meta forecasted that its AI products could “generate” between $2-3Bin 2025, surging to as much as $1.4T by 2035
$7B: Glean, the edge computing-focused AI search and knowledge management startup is nearing a new financing round at a $7B valuation, over 70x its ARR
$140M: Manychat, the AI-driven business messaging platform raised a $140M Series B to enhance its services for 1.5M global customers, including Nike and The New York Times
$108M: Cast AI, the AI workload optimization for GPU and compute startup raised $108M Series C, nearing a $900M valuation. It currently has 2,100+ customers
20-30% of Microsoft's code repositories are now AI-generated
💰 Q1 earnings
Airbnb reported “softness” in the travel market, particularly Canadians visiting the US, that has started to negatively impact their business. (Canadian visitors traveling to Mexico is up 27%, though.) Overall Airbnb revenue is up 6% YoY, but net income fell to $154M from $264M due to “broad macro uncertainty”
Alphabet exceeded Q1 earnings estimates with strong search advertising and AI updates. Announced a $70B share buyback and a 5% dividend increase, positioning itself for continued growth
Amazon saw a 19% increase in online ad revenue, which hit $13.92B, while total Q1 sales came in at a massive $115.67B, besting Wall Street’s expectations
Microsoft’s profits rose 18%, thanks to increased spending on cloud computing & AI
Meta shared that 3B people are now using WhatsApp every month, making it one of the few apps in history to ever reach that milestone. (Meta’s Facebook is also in the club.) Meta reported a Q1 earnings beat but faced challenges with its Reality Labs division
Netflix reported nearly $3B in profit with a strong operating margin. Analysts rate it "outperform" due to stable retention and economic resilience. Projected Q2 revenue exceeds $11B, with plans to explore video podcasts
Reddit also bested estimates and boasted to investors that it’s “well-positioned” to weather our uncertain economic climate.
Spotify’s MAU grew 10% YoY to 678M, with growth across all regions, led by Rest of World and Latin America. Premium Subscribers increased 12% Y/Y to 268M, with 5M net additions in Q1 2025, the highest Q1 net additions since 2020 and the second-highest in Spotify’s history. Despite subscriber growth, profit came short of expectations
📰 What’s going on
Meta launched the Meta AI app: A stand-alone AI assistant app that generates images, answers queries, remembers specific details, and even has a voice mode, making it a direct rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s built on the latest Llama 4 model and is being pitched as “a hyper-personalized assistant for users already living inside the Meta ecosystem: WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook”
Google has begun monetizing AI through conversations. Google is now showing ads within chatbot interactions through its AdSense network
Google's Gemini chatbot added image editing features, allowing users to modify both AI-generated and personal images, with multi-step editing, better prompt control, and SynthID watermarks for security
OpenAI has updated its ChatGPT search feature to include a shopping feature that will make it "simpler and faster to find, compare, and buy products in ChatGPT."
When a user asks a shopping-related query (eg. “Best espresso machines under $200”), ChatGPT will display product cards with images, prices, star ratings, and links to websites where they can buy the product
It’s initially being tested with fashion, beauty, home, and electronic goods, and OpenAI plans to integrate its ChatGPT memory feature to reference previous chats and provide more personalized shopping experiences
Alongside this update, ChatGPT will now also display trending searches when a user starts typing a question (like Google’s autocomplete feature) and enable users to use WhatsApp to get answers from ChatGPT
OpenAI has rolled back the last update it made to its latest model, GPT-4o (which was designed to make the model “more intuitive and effective”) after receiving a backlog of complaints about ChatGPT being “overly agreeable” and displaying insincere sycophantic behaviour
Anthropic launched "Integrations," enabling Claude AI to connect directly with popular work tools, shifting from simple chatbot functionality toward agentic AI. To start, you can choose from Integrations for 10 popular services, including Atlassian’s Jira and Confluence, Zapier, Cloudflare, Intercom, Asana, Square, Sentry, PayPal, Linear, and Plaid—with more to follow from companies like Stripe and GitLab
Perplexity is now available on WhatsApp. Users can interact with Perplexity directly within WhatsApp and while functionality is limited, the CEO says it has plans to support voice mode, videos, fact checking and group chats - as well as its native assistant
Duolingo announced it will become an "AI-first" company, gradually replacing contract workers with AI, integrating AI into hiring and performance reviews, and only approving new headcount if teams cannot further automate their work
Alibaba launched Qwen3, an open-source large language model series with eight variations, featuring hybrid reasoning capabilities and multilingual support, challenging both Chinese and US AI industry leaders
Sam Altman’s identity-verification, blockchain startup, World, has launched its iris-scanning “orbs” in the US. These orbs scan people’s irises to create a unique user ID, which they can use to verify their identity, which Altman believes is the only way to combat “AI fakery” and fraud. Alongside this, it’s also formed partnerships with Visa and Tinder (more on this later) and is planning to launch a mobile-like device in 2026—the Orb mini— which will have two large camera “eyes” that will scan users' irises, on the go
Visa has launched a program, called Intelligent Commerce, which enables AI agents to find and buy products on behalf of customers, to enhance and personalize their shopping experiences. To enable this, Visa is partnering with a mix of tech companies—including Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral, OpenAI, Perplexity, Samsung, and Stripe—which will connect to Visa’s payments network
Apple was finally told by a court to get on with it and allow developers to offer other checkout methods sans a risible 27% fee. The move should lower the cost basis for making money on mobile — which is great news for startup founders in the market slinging iOS or Android code. Naturally, Apple is incensed and plans to keep pressing its legal case. But the industry appears to be moving on from the era in which Google and Apple helped themselves to 30% of mobile app revenues. Startups, go crush it!
Amazon’s short-lived tariff pricing: Amazon quickly shot down a report that had suggested that it planned to visually display the impact of Trump’s tariffs on individual imported items (especially from China). According to Amazon, the tariff pricing messages were “never approved” and were only being considered for the “ultra low cost Amazon Haul store.” The White House labeled the move a “hostile and political act” and POTUS called Jeff Bezos personally to complain
📚 Good reads
Figma AI tools. Nick Babich dives into some of the AI tools recently launched by Figma that can enhance your design workflow. Includes UI design generation with First Draft, seamless image creation and editing, and automated layer naming to save time. These features can significantly streamline the design process, also making it easier for PMs to play around with design concepts
Master AI Product development with user-centric strategies. Aakash Gupta shares key tactics for building AI products that genuinely enhance user experiences. It stresses the importance of integrating feedback, focusing on solving user problems, and fostering a culture of experimentation within teams
Tired of feature factories? Welcome to feature inflation. In this insightful piece, Bogdan Coman shares how AI is transforming Product development, potentially creating a "giga-factory" of endless features. As the cost of building drops, the challenge shifts to effective decision-making rather than execution. PMs need to adapt by focusing on strategic thinking and prioritization to navigate this new landscape
10 pricing and packaging optimizations you should prioritize. Elena Verna explores impactful strategies to boost your pricing models. 10 straightforward optimizations PMs can consider to enhance monetization without overhauling their pricing structures. From initiating reverse trials to optimizing pricing pages, these tactics can help unlock significant revenue growth
AI 100: The most promising artificial intelligence startups of 2025 by CB Insights. With over $170B in funding pouring into the sector and significant advancements in both vertical and horizontal applications, the future of AI startups is set to transform various industries. As PMs, we should keenly watch these emerging players that are reshaping enterprise solutions and operational efficiencies across markets
That’s a wrap for this week! 🌟
I’d love to hear your thoughts—what stood out to you, and how are you thinking about integrating these insights into your Product strategy? Reply to the email or drop a comment on Substack to share your take. And if you found this valuable, forward it to a fellow PM, Product enthusiast, startup founder or entrepreneur who’d enjoy the read
See you next week! 👋
Angel