Week in Product #470 🚀
Claude Code for PMs, Gmail AI inbox, Alexa web, Build your first AI agent, Robots are here, Being intentional with career choices, Spotify's social features & more
Hi friends 👋
Welcome to a new week in Product!
🎰 The week in figures
$20B: xAI raised $20B Series E at over $200B valuation to expand data centers and advance AI models
$10B: Anthropic is reportedly raising $10B at a $350B valuation, highlighting its rapid growth and significant impact in the AI sector
800M: Samsung plans to double Gemini-powered devices to 800M this year
$150M: LMArena raised $150M in Series A to boost its AI evaluation platform. The platform, with 50M+ votes and 400+ model evaluations, aims to enhance features and user experience amid rising demand
$250M: Stablecoin card payments provider Rain announced a $250M Series C at a $1.95B valuation
$107M: Lyte, founded by ex-Apple Face ID engineers Alexander Shpunt, Arman Hajati, and Yuval Gerson, emerged from stealth and raised ~$107M to develop tech to help robots see better and move more safely in the world
$100M: Swap Commerce, the London and NY-based startup secured $100M just six months after a $40M round. It offers an AI-powered platform for brands, notably luxury clothing, to manage storefronts and transactions, challenging Shopify
1.1%: Microsoft's Copilot web market share stays at just 1.1% while ChatGPT dominates at 64.5%, and Gemini surged to 21.5%
📰 What’s going on
Gmail launched an AI Inbox showing to-dos (bills due, appointments to confirm) and catch-up topics grouped by category, plus AI Overviews answering natural language questions like “Who was the plumber that quoted me last year?” without opening emails. Also made “Help Me Write,” thread summaries, and replies free for all 3B users (video)
OpenAI unveiled a version of its chatbot that connects to medical records and wellness apps for personalized health advice. The service, developed with 260 physicians, prioritizes privacy and aims to enhance AI's role in healthcare
X restricted Grok's image generation to paying subscribers only after international backlash over non-consensual nude images
DeepSeek plans to release V4, its next flagship AI model, around Lunar New Year, with internal tests showing it outperforms Claude and GPT in coding tasks
Spotify unveiled a new social listening feature to its mobile app. Users will see what people are listening to in the sidebar alongside their chats. You can tap the songs to add them to your library, or react with an emoji
Amazon launches Alexa.com, bringing its AI assistant online, focusing on areas like calendar and smart home management. The Alexa app is also updated for a chatbot experience
JP Morgan reached a deal to take over the Apple credit card program from Goldman Sachs
Plaud unveils a new AI pin and desktop meeting notetaker, aiming to enhance productivity by integrating AI technology into everyday tasks and meetings
Samsung introduced its 'AI Living' vision, focusing on integrating AI across its product ecosystem to enhance everyday life. It won a CES Innovation Award for Spatial Signage, with a glasses-free 3D display featuring an ultra-slim 52mm profile with an 85-inch frame, adding multidimensional depth to 2D content
📚 Good reads
[Video] How PMs can use Google Antigravity to build prototypes. Google’s product design lead for Antigravity, Andy Zhang, explains how PMs can use Google’s new Antigravity tool to test ideas, build prototypes, and add new features
[Video] Getting started with Claude Code. If you haven’t tried Claude Code yet (because, y’know, you’re not a coder?), this 47-min video from Peter Yang might convince you to start. He interviews Teresa Torres, who uses Claude Code to run her entire life. Unlike chatting in a browser, Claude Code can read your files, execute commands, search the web, and remember context across projects. Think of it as hiring a $100/month assistant who lives inside your computer. Complement with this guide on how to use Claude Code, also by Teresa Torres, and these 9 tips by Hannah Stulberg
The AI revolution’s shaky economics and fast-evolving tech. A roundtable with the man who predicted the 2008 crash, Anthropic’s co-founder, and a leading AI podcaster debating whether today’s trillion‑dollar AI buildout is smart investment or FOMO-fueled overspend. For PMs: watch inference costs, ROIC trends, real closed‑loop adoption, and how to create defensibility
How to build your first AI agent. Pawel Huryn shares a hands-on guide to building a real, deployable AI agent in 7 steps
Your job isn’t the problem. Inspiring piece by David Pereira explaining how to be intentional with career choices. Many PMs blame companies, but it’s usually a fit problem. Pereira explains the cycle through his own experience: hype, friction, disengagement, quit. He also explains how you must pick the “game” you can win (startup vs corporate, outcomes vs delivery)
🔧 Cool products to try
Situation Monitor gives you a live global map tracking conflicts, military bases, nuclear facilities, strategic waterways, and the Pentagon Pizza Index—which spikes when officials order late-night delivery during crises. Not directly product-related, but you can make it product-related (and geopolitics influence product!). And it’s free
Google Edge Gallery lets you try models that run entirely on your iPhone (via TestFlight), so you can chat, use images, and even ask with audio without sending data to a server once the model is loaded. Free to try
🤖 Futurism
LG introduces ClOiD, an AI-powered home robot performing chores like cooking and laundry. It features articulated arms, autonomous navigation, and connects via the ThinQ ecosystem
Researchers developed a neuromorphic artificial skin for robots, utilizing spiking circuitry for pressure detection to identify pressure locations and trigger reflex-like responses
Boston Dynamics revealed its next-gen Atlas humanoid robot is ready for mass-production and will use Nvidia processing and Google DeepMind technology over competing platforms, signaling major partnerships reshaping robotics
That’s a wrap for this week.
Have a great weekend.
