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Welcome to The AI Report — the #1 AI newsletter for business leaders.
You don’t need to be technical. Just informed.
• 1. 🦄 Invest in the next breakout with Mode Mobile
• 2. ⚡️ OpenAI takes Apple to court
• 3. 💼 Your Business Briefing
• 4. ✍️ Today’s Policy Corner
• 5. 🗞️ The News Bulletin
Are you ready to launch AI transformation for your company?
TOGETHER WITH MODE MOBILE
The Next Breakout Might Be in Your Pocket
Everyone’s hunting for the next Unicorn.
The type of “category disruptor” that grows fast and turns early believers into big winners.
59,000+ investors think that Mode Mobile could be one of those rare finds.
Americans spend 4 ½ hours on their phones daily, and Mode Mobile is monetizing that screentime. With $1B+ earned by over 490M customers and 32,481% revenue growth, Mode’s EarnPhone is turning smartphones into income generating assets.
Their previous raises sold out, and the company is now offering pre-IPO shares at $0.50/share with up to 20% bonus, exclusive to early investors.
Being early is everything, and this window is still open.
Disclaimers *Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur. The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.
Latest in AI
OpenAI takes Apple to court
🚨 Our Report
OpenAI is preparing to sue Apple after the ChatGPT integration, announced at WWDC in June 2024, failed to deliver the subscriber growth and product prominence the company expected. OpenAI has enlisted an outside law firm to work through its options, which could include sending Apple a formal breach-of-contract notice.
🔓 Key Points
OpenAI executives claim the integration has been "buried" within Apple's operating systems, with features hard to find and revenue from the tie-up nowhere close to projections.
Apple has its own grievances, including concerns about OpenAI's privacy standards and irritation over OpenAI's push into hardware, led by former Apple executives including ex-design chief Jony Ive.
Any legal move would likely wait until after OpenAI's current trial with Elon Musk concludes, meaning a formal breach-of-contract notice could come before a full lawsuit.
🔐 Relevance
Apple has a long history of alienating major software partners, from Google Maps to Spotify. For enterprise leaders watching AI partnerships closely, this dispute shows how even the biggest deals can sour when platform control sits entirely with one party. OpenAI's frustration also comes as it navigates reported tensions with Microsoft ahead of its IPO ambitions.
The AI Executive's Pass is live
Most business leaders are already paying for 4–6 AI tools they found separately, at full price, with no coordination between them. The AI Executive's Pass is the fix.
One $199/year membership. $11,000+ in tools and resources built for executives actually implementing AI — not just reading about it.
Inside: Notion, beehiiv, ListKit, Make.com, Paperform, Intercom, a private GPT training session, and a LinkedIn growth consult.
Launch pricing ends May 19. Get it while it's here.
THE BUSINESS BRIEFING: HR & TALENT (powered by Upscaile)
RVS iGlobal (white-label IT services provider, 143 employees across UK/India/Canada/Europe) was burning 30–45 hours per hiring cycle on manual phone screens for technical roles like Network Support Engineers and Azure Infrastructure Engineers. Time zones killed momentum—recruiters in the UK chasing candidates in India, phone tag stretching cycles to weeks. They deployed TalentSprout AI screening integrated directly into their existing Zoho Recruit ATS. Candidates now complete async video interviews on their own schedule, scored automatically, with fraud detection flagging suspicious behavior.
Tool used: TalentSprout—AI-powered async screening with built-in fraud detection and ATS integration.
Result: 248 candidates screened in 6 weeks. 115+ hours saved. 84% completion rate. 42% auto-shortlisted with structured scorecards replacing recruiter notes. Average interview time dropped from 30–45 minutes to 5–10 minutes—4x faster.
The lesson: Integration determines adoption. TalentSprout's one-click OAuth with Zoho Recruit meant recruiters never left their existing workflow—interview invites fired automatically when candidate status changed, scores synced back as notes. The team organically expanded from 4 roles to 9 without prompting because the tool fit inside their process, not beside it.
Steal this: Audit your ATS integrations this week. If your screening tool requires manual data entry or tab-switching, adoption will stall. Test one-click OAuth connections or API triggers that push/pull candidate data automatically—closed-loop workflows drive usage, standalone tools collect dust.
THE POLICY CORNER
FTC forces Instacart to refund $60M and ban AI pricing experiments that hid true costs.
The Federal Trade Commission sued Instacart for deceptive practices, including misleading "free delivery" claims, unclear refund guarantees, undisclosed service fees, and auto-enrolling customers in paid memberships without consent. Internal testing revealed Instacart's AI pricing tool, Eversight, showed some shoppers’ prices up to 23% higher than others for identical items at the same time, prompting investigations into whether consumers knew they were part of pricing experiments. The settlement requires $60 million in consumer refunds and bars future misrepresentations about delivery costs, fees, or guarantees. Instacart must also stop automatically enrolling customers in paid tiers without clear opt-in consent.
Deadline: In effect now. Settlement terms enforceable immediately.
Your move: Audit any dynamic pricing, personalized offers, or "free trial" flows this quarter. Verify customers see accurate totals before checkout, understand what they're consenting to, and can cancel subscriptions without penalty. If you run pricing tests, ensure prominent disclosure that users may see experimental prices.
AI News
🔐 ServiceNow expands AI agents across IT, CRM, and security: Platform now includes cross-functional AI specialists with built-in governance, role-scoped permissions, and audit trails. FULL STORY
💳 Anthropic limits Claude usage as costs spike: Paid subscribers now face separate credit meters for agent tools after companies like ServiceNow and Uber burned through annual AI budgets. FULL STORY
⚡ Google preps "Gemini Spark" agent for enterprise: Beta code reveals autonomous agent with cross-app access, scheduled tasks, and inbox management—launching ahead of I/O 2026. FULL STORY
🪓 Cisco cuts 4,000 jobs despite record revenue: Networking giant slashing 5% of workforce to fund AI and cybersecurity investments, following Cloudflare and GM's recent layoffs. FULL STORY
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The Money: Security and cooling absorb capital
As AI infrastructure scales, investors are backing the bottlenecks hyperscalers can't ignore: thermal limits and attack surfaces. Two deals this week signal a shift from model hype to operational reality, cooling systems that prevent meltdown and security platforms that catch threats in real time.
Deals to know:
Iceotope Group (Series B, $26M) — Precision liquid cooling for racks approaching 1MW density. SemiAnalysis projects liquid-cooled AI accelerators to grow from 3GW to 40GW within two years. Investors: Two Seas Capital, Barclays Climate Ventures
Exaforce (Series B, $125M) — AI agents automate threat detection and response, reducing manual SOC tasks by 90%. Already onboarded 20 customers including Replit and Guardant Health. Investors: HarbourVest, Peak XV, Mayfield, Khosla Ventures
Signal: Infrastructure-layer defensibility commands premium valuations. Compute is commoditizing; companies solving operational constraints, are capturing investor mindshare.
Thoughts on today's edition?Hit me up on LinkedIn, I read every message. |  |
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