PLUS: Why AI code tools make devs slower, and the new AI browser wars

It's a new day AI Rockstars!

Midjourney is marking its third anniversary, celebrating its journey from a small project to a major force in generative art—all with a famously small team.

Their success provides a powerful blueprint for how focused teams can build hugely influential products in this space. As the AI industry matures, is this lean approach the most sustainable path to creating real impact?

In today’s AI recap:

• Midjourney's third anniversary and its lean success model
• The new AI browser war heating up against Chrome
• Why AI coding tools can slow down experienced developers
• Marc Benioff's vision for AI as a workforce amplifier

Midjourney's Lean AI Milestone

The Report: Lean AI pioneer Midjourney marked its third anniversary since launching to the public, celebrating its journey from a small project to a major force in generative art.

Broaden your horizons:

• Midjourney exemplifies the Lean AI Native model, achieving massive scale and cultural impact with a famously small and efficient team.
• The platform has become a cultural phenomenon, empowering creators and artists to generate unique visual art and explore new imaginative frontiers.
• From its public launch, the company has focused on making its tools accessible and building a community to explore the future of AI-driven creativity together.

If you remember one thing: Midjourney's success story provides a powerful blueprint for how small, focused teams can build hugely influential products in the AI space. Their continued focus on community and creative exploration signals an even more interesting road ahead for generative art.

The AI Browser Wars Begin

The Report: AI startup Perplexity is taking direct aim at Google Chrome by launching Comet, an AI-powered web browser. This move signals a new competitive front where startups believe a smarter, integrated AI experience can finally challenge the long-standing browser hierarchy.

Broaden your horizons:

• Despite the new challengers, Google Chrome still holds a massive 68% of the global browser market, creating a significant hurdle for any newcomer.
• This isn't an isolated move; OpenAI is also reportedly developing its own browser, indicating a broader trend of top AI players viewing the browser as a critical platform for their technology.
• For these new browsers to succeed, they must offer a drastically better experience, as current versions like Comet are still prone to hallucinations and must overcome the friction of getting users to switch.

If you remember one thing: The battle for the browser is no longer just about speed or extensions; it's about fundamentally rethinking how we access information online. AI-native browsers are betting that a conversational, agent-driven experience is the future that will finally chip away at incumbent dominance.

The AI Productivity Paradox

The Report: A surprising new study from METR found that AI coding tools actually made experienced developers 19% slower on complex tasks. This contradicts the developers' own perception that the tools made them 20% faster.

Broaden your horizons:

• The slowdown was attributed to several factors, including developer over-optimism, high familiarity with their existing codebases, and the AI’s poor reliability on large, complex projects.
• Instead of speeding up development, the tools shifted how developers spent their time, with less active coding and more time spent prompting and reviewing AI-generated outputs.
• Researchers noted these findings are specific to experienced developers working in familiar, large repositories, suggesting AI tools might still be effective in other contexts.

If you remember one thing: The biggest takeaway is the significant gap between feeling productive and actually being productive. It underscores the importance of measuring AI's true impact on workflows, not just relying on user sentiment.

Benioff's Vision: AI as an Augmentation Engine

The Report: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is pushing back against AI doomsday predictions, arguing it will augment the workforce rather than replace it. He shared this vision in a recent onstage interview at the AI for Good Global Summit.

Broaden your horizons:

• To absorb new AI efficiencies, Salesforce has paused hiring for engineers and lawyers for the year.
• This contrasts with a different view from Anthropic's CEO, who has warned that AI could eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.
• Benioff predicts AI will trigger a radical explosion in small businesses by amplifying their capabilities to compete.

If you remember one thing: The dominant narrative is shifting from job replacement to job augmentation, focusing on how AI can enhance human potential. This outlook suggests the biggest opportunities may lie in empowering smaller, more agile teams to achieve more with less.

The Shortlist

Meta seeks to raise a staggering $29B from private capital firms to fund its massive AI data center build-out, signaling the enormous infrastructure costs of competing in the AI race.

Reddit races to protect its forums from AI-generated content, aiming to preserve the value of its human-generated conversations, which it licenses to AI companies.

Germany asked Apple and Google to remove the Chinese AI app DeepSeek from its app stores, citing concerns that the company illegally transfers user data to China.

Lyft integrated Anthropic's Claude into its customer care platform, reducing resolution times by 87% and showcasing how frontier models are being deployed to enhance core business operations.