We are opening up a new role at Quora: a single engineer who will use AI to automate manual work across the company and increase employee productivity. I will work closely with this person.

We rebuilt customer support around Grok Bot to scale our operations without adding headcount. It works autonomously to respond to customers, resolve tickets, and manage the queue. x.ai/news/grok-bot-customer-…

Cursor is now part of @SpaceX. Today, we have officially closed our acquisition. We will join the @SpaceXAI team to help make Grok the world's most useful AI and improve Grok Build, Grok Bot, Grok API, Cursor, and more. SpaceX has built some of the most inspiring and impressive technology in the world, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to become part of such a special company. Onwards.

THE FUTURE OF ENERGY

cafe cursor LA next month! july 15th - come meet @cursor_ai team, get credits and build + some great coffee 💛

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation). Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there. Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI. As a result, 1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb. Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more. 2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future). Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire" 3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed. Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies. 4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either. No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money." I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here. Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success". Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

B2B customer proof/logo wall tiers: Tier 8: "Loved by people who use other unrelated products" Tier 7: A few users who happen to work at famous companies Tier 6: One team somewhere in the company uses it Tier 5: Companies use the product but didn't give their permission to use their logo in marketing Tier 4: Actual contracted customers with wall to wall instals and with logo permissions acquired Tier 3: Customer story / video Tier 2: They build their company operations around your product and call it “the [Company] way” Tier 1: Their CEO mentions you unprompted in an all-hands, investor update, or earnings calls

This is such a perfect embodiment of the AI era. No shade to the author, we’re all guilty. RCT was hand written in assembly by a master of the craft. Now we can cosplay as him, produce a very sloppy version of the original, and get some temporary tiktok-eque 15s high. For what?

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: federalreserve.gov/newsevent…

We ran an ad in The Wall Street Journal today

Polymarket x Google We're excited to announce Polymarket odds will be integrated into Google. Coming soon.