Dipanjan Deb: “AI will not kill the software industry, but it will create a dispersion of winners and losers. For some companies, their [long-term valuations] are permanently impacted, but for others people will realise that not only do they have strong moats, but they will be able to have a greater market to sell to.”
NYTimes: “People are spending more time with Google than ever. Users are writing queries three times as long as the keyword-heavy questions they asked of traditional searches, Google said at its developer conference in May. People are spending one to nine more minutes in AI Mode than on traditional Google searches, according to three studies from researchers tallied by The New York Times. One October study from Growth Memo, a newsletter focused on search and marketing, found that in about 75 percent of sessions, users never left AI Mode for the web. For publishers, businesses, banks and others that relied on Google to funnel its billions of users to their websites, the impact has been unmistakable as the company has increasingly incorporated A.I. into search. Google’s users are no longer leaving Google after a search and are just reading its A.I.-generated answers, they said, which means fewer people are coming to their websites and search traffic has dropped.”
FT: “In economic terms, the competitive effects are not clear-cut. Open-weight models (a limited form of open-source software) are cheaper because the companies that develop them do not look to recover their training costs, and because they are run either on a customer’s own systems or hosted by cloud-computing companies that compete on cost. Very large models like Kimi K3, though, are expensive to run. Also, the true cost to a user is not the price of a token (the basic unit of output, on which pricing is based), but the cost of completing a task. Some models use fewer tokens to do that, or generate fewer hallucinations (meaning less human labour is needed to validate their responses). That said, the latest spate of Chinese models looks set to bring greater price competition to the most advanced forms of AI.”
Forbes: “Retail technology faces a severe funding gap, receiving only $300 million in venture capital annually compared to billions in other sectors. This disparity exists despite numerous operational challenges technology could solve, from inventory management to customer experience. Investors are wary due to retailers being slow, difficult customers with complex legacy systems and a low tolerance for failed tech pilots. Many retail tech startups also lack deep industry understanding. However, the rise of AI is creating new opportunities for transformative solutions, making this funding gap more critical. To bridge it, retailers must clearly communicate their needs, embrace experimentation, and foster a culture that tolerates pilot failures. Consolidation within retail tech could also streamline development and reduce market noise, ultimately making the sector more attractive for investment and innovation.”
