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Julie's Take
Quick analysis of recent and relevant news & events.

Apple iPhone 17: Hardware Impresses; AI Silence - Nearly
Apple's annual device event took place on September 9, 2025. Live stream link . What struck me the most is how little was said about AI...

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Sep 9
Open AI's Hits $1B Revenue in July
Open AI hit $12B ARR in July of 2025. See NBC for interview with the CFO. They now have 700M weekly active users (WAU) have seen an...

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Sep 7
Amazon Blocks AI Shopping Bots - Should You?
Seems like the "new thing" for consumers in 2025 is tools to browse the web for them (us) and get stuff done (e.g., order groceries, book...

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Sep 7
MIT: 95% of AI Pilots Fail To Scale or Deliver Results
MIT's NANDA Initiative released a well-researched report. Findings are credible. The headline is damning - and click bait. Worth a read....

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Sep 7
Walmart Gives Consumers (and Staff) SuperAgents
The WSJ reported  that Walmart is simplifying its AI Agent lineup (see Walmart’s blog post ). Here is why I think this is important: ...

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Jul 29
Amazon Acquires "Bee" - An AI Listening Band, Aspiring Assistant
Amazon acquired "Bee" an AI listening band (think Fitbit style) that wants to get to know its customers well enough to become their...

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Jul 23
Anthropic Reaches $4B ARR
Anthropic reached an annual revenue run rate of $4B. The Information reports that this is four times their ARR at the beginning of the...

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Jul 8
Use of Tokens Is Skyrocketing
Nathan Lambert offers thought-provoking insights about how fast we are scaling our use of tokens with genAI applications. He uses...

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May 27
AI Energy Usage Forecast: 12% of US Energy by 2028
MIT Tech Review published a comprehensive study on genAI's energy usage. Here are a few of my takeaway's: (I also listened in on a...

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May 21
Meta's Digital Companions: Prioritizing Profits Over Ethics?
The WSJ journal published an article that should be a must-read at least for parents if not all of us. The topline takeaway is that Meta...

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Apr 28
PEW Research Releases New AI Report
Pew Research Center released a report that summarizes an in-depth study they conducted through interviews and surveys. They compared US...

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Apr 15
OpenAI Expands Its Memory
Earlier this month, OpenAI announced expanded memory features within its ChatGPT application. The Verge runs through the entire feature...

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Apr 15
Humane View On AI Agents
Just listened to Adam Grant interview Sam Altman around the future of AI. At a time when I believe too many Silicon Valley leaders are...

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Apr 2
MIT's AI Hype Index
MIT Tech Review published a fun AI hype image . Scroll over the images to get their take on what is real and what is hype.

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Mar 30
AI Agent Taxonomy + Risks
Succinct opinion piece on MIT Technology Review on the types of AI Agents along with their risks. Authors are from Hugging Face.

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Mar 30
GenAI Images Fall Short For Me - Too Often
I may just be a horrible prompt writer. I know this is a skill. I am always surprised by how quickly these image generation tools works...

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Mar 27
WSJ Intros Its Tax Assistant: Lars
WSJ's Lars tax assistant was fast and detailed, but fell short of my expectations of personal tax advice - I probably asked too much.

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Mar 24
Taco Bell: Give Consumers Touchpoint Choice
Consumers want touchpoint choice.

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Mar 19
Too Early To Penalize Apple For Siri Delay
Apple has the right assets to make a consumer virtual assistant play.

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Mar 19
Using GenAI To Solve Real World Problems: Chip Design Shortage
I had the privilege of attending Silicon Catalyst in November of 2024. My jaw dropped when the host referenced a Semiconductor Industry...

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Feb 24
ChatGPT’s Traffic Hits 3.8B Visitors in January 2025
Consumer adoption of genAI tools has been rapid in comparison to any app in history. We used to say that there were no barriers to the...

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Feb 24
Phi’s Stack Vitamins Are A Game-Changer For My Sleep
Congratulations to Kirk & his team. I have been fortunate to trial Phi’s  Stack multivitamin product in my role as an advisor. I’ll let...

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Feb 24
GenAI Searches Will Change Consumer Digital Behavior
MIT Tech Review’s Niall Firth and Mat Honan discussed  the impact of genAI search on how consumers find answers to questions online. I...

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Feb 24
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