PLUS: Mozilla’s in-browser AI agents, Google’s latest antitrust complaint, and new US chip restrictions

Good afternoon AI Rockstars!

Telegram is evolving from a simple messenger with a new update that adds productivity tools like checklists and community post submissions.

This move positions the app as a more comprehensive platform for creators and communities. But will users embrace these new features, or does it risk bloating the core messaging experience?

In today’s Lean AI Native Report:

• Telegram's new toolkit with checklists and post submissions
• Mozilla's open-source blueprint for in-browser AI agents
• European publishers' antitrust complaint against Google's AI Overviews
• New US restrictions on AI chip exports to Southeast Asia

Telegram's New Toolkit

The Report: Telegram is expanding beyond just messaging, rolling out a new productivity toolkit for users and channels. The update introduces checklists for task management and a feature for users to submit posts to their favorite communities.

Broaden your horizons:

• The new checklist feature helps you track personal to-dos and coordinate team tasks directly within the app.
• With Suggested Posts, users can now submit content like memes and fan art, giving channel owners a new stream of user-generated content.
• The update also explicitly supports submissions for brand collaborations, opening a new pathway for creators and businesses to connect on the platform.

If you remember one thing: Telegram is strategically evolving from a simple messenger into a comprehensive platform for communities and creators. This move puts it in direct competition with platforms that combine social features with productivity tools.

AI Agents in Your Browser

The Report: Mozilla.ai has released an open-source blueprint for running AI agents directly in a web browser. This approach uses WebAssembly to package agents into simple HTML files, eliminating complex setup needs.

Broaden your horizons:

• The technology relies on WebAssembly and Pyodide to run Python code in-browser, making agents easily shareable and executable on different systems.
• The Wasm-agents blueprint is highly flexible, supporting not only OpenAI models but also self-hosted and local models through tools like Ollama.
• While still experimental, the project currently depends on the openai-agents framework because its dependencies are fully compatible with the browser environment.

If you remember one thing: This development lowers the barrier to entry for experimenting with AI agents, placing powerful tools directly in the hands of more developers and tinkerers. It signals a move toward more accessible, private, and user-controlled AI applications that run locally on your own machine.

Publishers vs. Google's AI

The Report: A group of European publishers has filed an antitrust complaint against Google, arguing its AI Overviews feature unfairly siphons traffic and revenue by summarizing their content directly on the search results page.

Broaden your horizons:

• The Independent Publishers Alliance accuses Google of abusing its dominant position by prioritizing its own AI summaries over links to original sources.
• Data from SimilarWeb shows the feature has led to a major increase in “zero-click” searches, where users get answers without ever visiting a publisher's website.
• This complaint adds to Google's ongoing legal challenges, as the company is also facing other antitrust battles in the EU over its Android operating system and ad-tech practices.

If you remember one thing: This legal battle highlights the core conflict between AI platforms that summarize information and the original creators who produce it. Its outcome could set a critical precedent for how AI models legally use online content, shaping the future of digital publishing and information access.

The New Chip Chokehold

The Report: The US administration is planning new restrictions on AI chip shipments to Malaysia and Thailand. The move targets advanced semiconductors from companies like Nvidia to prevent them from being rerouted to China.

Broaden your horizons:

• The policy aims to close a potential backdoor, as US officials worry that chips sent to the region could be diverted or used to benefit Chinese firms, especially as tech giants like Microsoft and Oracle expand their data center presence there.
• This is not a total blockade; the draft rule reportedly includes a phased implementation and exemptions, allowing US and allied companies to continue shipments for a period without a license to avoid major supply chain disruptions.
• These restrictions target Southeast Asia because it has become a major hub for the final stages of chip production, with Malaysia alone being the world's fourth-largest semiconductor exporter.

If you remember one thing: This signals an evolution in US tech policy, extending containment efforts beyond direct trade with China to crucial intermediary countries. The action underscores the growing challenge for tech companies to navigate an increasingly complex and fragmented global supply chain.

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.