TLDR 2026-06-03

Google Report: How Startups Can Drive Growth with Generative Media (Sponsor)

As simple text generation gives way to interactive 3D worlds, how should your technical roadmap shift?

In Google for Startups's Future of AI report, top technical founders and Googlers lay out:

Building for "post-keyboard" UX: How to architect systems for spatial computing and digital avatars.
Utility-driven workflows: Why leaders are moving beyond static generation to agents that autonomously execute complex media tasks.
The automation stack: Strategies for deploying and managing automated creative systems at scale.

Your defensible moat will look different by year's end. Read the report to learn what to focus on in an automated world

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Big Tech & Startups

Microsoft Launches AI That Works Like an Executive Assistant (3 minute read)

Microsoft's Scout is an always-active executive assistant designed to handle a wide range of tasks autonomously. It integrates with Microsoft's products to complete tasks like autonomously asking meeting organizers to reschedule if there's a timing conflict. Pricing for Scout has yet to be disclosed, but customers will likely be charged based on how much they use the software rather than a flat subscription fee. Access will initially require a subscription to GitHub Copilot.

Inside Microsoft's Project Solara (7 minute read)

Project Solara is a platform for devices that run AI agents instead of apps. Its aim is to open up entirely new scenarios for computing. The current concept involves a desktop hub that sits beside a PC that responds to voice commands and a wearable badge with a fingerprint button that wakes an agent with one press. Microsoft envisions a future where hardware makers and other industry partners turn these reference designs into implementations of their own.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

In a surprise launch, China debuts another big rocket designed for reusability (12 minute read)

China tested its Long March 12B again on Monday. While the launch did not include any attempt to land the first stage booster, the rocket carried grid fins and landing legs, important elements for future recovery experiments. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation declared the flight a complete success. First-stage recovery tests are scheduled to be carried out at a later, opportune time.

Microsoft's New Quantum Chip Aiming for Useful Machine in 2029 (4 minute read)

Microsoft is betting that it can set up a commercially viable quantum machine by 2029. Its new Majorana 2 chip boasts 12 qubits that last longer than 20 seconds. The company's previous model had 8 qubits that blinked out of existence in less than 12 milliseconds. Microsoft is continuing to work with the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to evaluate its progress.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

Karpathy's Autoresearch found a 3-year-old bug in Posthog's query engine (and improved performance by 11%) (9 minute read)

Posthog pointed an AI agent at its query agent, fed it slow queries from production, and let it run overnight. The next morning, the team discovered that for almost three years, every query with a timestamp filter had not been using ClickHouse's primary key correctly. Fixing the issue cut the number of granules ClickHouse had to scan by 62% on the benchmark query and made the query itself meaningfully faster. This post discusses the team's setup, the bug itself, and PostHog's plans to automate this type of analysis.

Building Software Is Learning (7 minute read)

You need to learn what it is you are building before you start building it. Building software is learning, and you want to learn as much as possible. This involves asking more questions, building prototypes, iteration, figuring out what to cut out, and trying to explain the idea. There are many ways to learn - focus on what gives you the best and fastest feedback.

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Miscellaneous

How One Tech Company Created 13 New Types of Jobs Because of AI (8 minute read)

Box, a company that makes software for storing and managing data, has started selling AI products aimed at automating tasks like reviewing and approving contracts. The company's switch to focusing on AI has resulted in the need for new positions to be filled. It recently hired a senior director of AI, an AI architect, an AI solutions manager, and an AI platform leader. Box expects to add more than 100 new employees by early next year. It is unclear whether the growth of such roles will make up for AI-related job cuts.

AI models are having their iPhone moment. What's Next? (14 minute read)

The iPhone took roughly a decade to shift from rupture to infrastructure. AI is moving much faster. The infrastructure framing is already present in enterprise software, developer tools, and hardware roadmaps. The edge will be the applications that make their underlying capabilities feel indispensable and invisible at the same time.

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Quick Links

The Google Capital Company (15 minute read)

In a world where compute is constrained, the company that wins will be the one with the most cash capacity.

Meta Will Reportedly Let Employees Take 30-Minute Breaks From Its Tracking Program (2 minute read)

A subset of employees will also be able to request to opt out of the program altogether.

Trump Signs AI Executive Order to Increase Government Oversight (1 minute read)

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that reduces the voluntary review period for powerful models to 30 days, down from 90 days.

Microsoft unveils new AI models to lessen reliance on OpenAI and lower costs for developers (3 minute read)

Microsoft unveiled MAI-Code-1-Flash, a coding model, and MAI-Thinking-1, a reasoning model, at its Build developer conference on Tuesday.

Trust Factory (7 minute read)

You can fix code, but you can't fix trust - once it's gone, it's hard-to-impossible to get it back.

Google Is Quietly Buying Code From Play Store Developers to Train AI (4 minute read)

Google has emailed some developers with an offer to join a program that would allow them to generate additional revenue if they allow Google to access their codebases.

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Thanks for reading,
Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders

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Microsoft Scout 🤖, AI-native roles 💼, Autoresearch bug fixes 👨‍💻