What I Learned Last Week #9
Omi is an AI wearable assistant. Tolans are AI aliens living on 500,000 phones. Lovable is Europe's fastest-growing startup. Per-outcome vs per-month business model shift. OpenAI news. And more...
Last week, I realized that keeping up with everything new in AI is impossible. This week, I realized that even keeping up with new releases in LLMs is impossible. We are flooded with new models and updates every day. I need an AI agent to keep track of that for me. But until I build one, here are some cool things at the intersection of AI and business that I learned last week:
Omi is a sci-fi AI wearable, reminding me of a Black Mirror episode.
Tolans are AI aliens living on 500,000 phones.
Lovable is Europe’s fastest-growing startup ($0-$30M in four months)!
AI drives a business model shift from per-month to per-outcome.
AI agents are coming for our jobs, but do we tax them?
GPT-4.1 series launches with exciting upgrades.
OpenAI creates waves by trying to move to a for-profit model…
…and it appears that Elon Musk’s offer to buy OpenAI had a hidden agenda.
Also, OpenAI drops the AGI race and disbands the AGI team.
Alibaba launches new Qwen3 model.
Other companies launched more exciting models, but I did not have time to read about them… AI aliens and sci-fi devices were a lot more exciting!
Happy Easter to you!
Omi Is a Sci-Fi Voice-Powered AI Companion
I stumbled across Omi, a fascinating AI wearable device that promises to transform how we handle daily tasks. I was rather skeptical because it reminded me of Humane AI, which failed terribly. But Omi has had a different approach by building with a community. It functions as your personal AI clone that remembers everything about you while helping with translations, email composition, and planning, all through voice commands. And it’s extremely cheap (at least the rough alpha version). I ordered one and will let you know more when it arrives. Read more →
Voice-Based AI Aliens Turn Improv Into $4M Revenue
Portola's 'Tolans' are voice-based AI companions that look like colorful aliens and live on 500,000+ phones. The key to their explosive growth? Abandoning rigid scripting for theatrical improvisation. Rather than programming characters with backstories, Tolans develop personalities through user interactions, accumulating memories from conversations that evolve. This approach has helped Portola jump from $1M to $4M in annualized recurring revenue in just four weeks. Read more →
Europe's Fastest-Growing Startup:
$0 to $30M in Four Months
Swedish AI coding startup Lovable has achieved what seems impossible: scaling from $0 to $30M ARR in just 120 days with only 18 people and $2M in burn. Their secret? Their approach is refreshingly straightforward: launch quickly, learn faster, and hire high-agency former founders. Rather than specialized teams, they've thrived with generalists who move fast. Read more →
SaaS Companies Now Selling AI Work,
Not Just Subscriptions
Companies are shifting from selling access (seat licenses) to selling completed work (AI outputs). Intercom charges per AI resolution, Zendesk bills for autonomous support tickets, and Salesforce now offers $2 per AI conversation. This creates higher pricing power for vendors while potentially lowering costs for customers. But this shift brings serious operational challenges—more volatile revenue, complicated sales comp structures, and unpredictable forecasting models. Read more →
The Rise of AI Agents:
Are We Ready for Non-Human Coworkers?
We’ve moved from an analog workforce (pre-2000s) to a digital workforce (2000s-2020s), and now we’re entering the era of the AI workforce. This raises fascinating questions (don’t share these ideas with Trump, btw): Do we tax AI workers? What happens when AI sales reps negotiate with AI procurement teams? What happens when our economies accelerate beyond the 20-year doubling rate that's plateaued for a century? Do we get a UBI (universal basic income) because the AI agents don’t need a salary anyway? Read more →
GPT-4.1 Series Launches with Major Upgrades
OpenAI just released three new models: GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano, with impressive performance improvements across the board. The standout gains? A 21.4% jump in coding capabilities and significantly better instruction following. All three models support context windows up to 1 million tokens and come with reduced pricing—GPT-4.1 is 26% cheaper than GPT-4o. Read more →
OpenAI's Controversial Attempt to Become a For-Profit
The AI darling, which started as a non-profit lab in 2015, has become a $300B giant. Today, it attempts a structural shift to a for-profit. It has drawn lawsuits from Elon Musk and scrutiny from former employees who argue this violates its founding mission. Make sure you read the next piece as well, which tells of Musk’s cunning move. Read more →
Musk's $100B OpenAI Offer Is More Than Just a Number
Elon Musk offered $97.4B to buy control of OpenAI—a bid that Sam Altman quickly rejected. Beyond the eye-popping figure lies a strategic move to complicate OpenAI's transition to a full for-profit structure. Musk's offer establishes a concrete valuation floor that the nonprofit board must now justify accepting less than. Read more →
OpenAI Disbands AGI Readiness Team as Safety Lead Exits
Miles Brundage, OpenAI's Senior Advisor for AGI Readiness, just resigned after six years at the company. In his departure, he revealed that neither OpenAI nor any other lab is ready for AGI — a statement he claims isn't controversial among leadership. He plans to pursue independent AI policy work, citing publication constraints at OpenAI and the need for cross-industry collaboration, especially with China. Read more →
Alibaba's New Qwen3:
Beyond Text Into Vision and Audio
Alibaba's Qwen3 comes with multimodal AI capabilities, expanded token limits, and specialized variants that break traditional boundaries. Qwen3-VL integrates visual and textual data for tasks like image captioning and scene understanding. Qwen3-math tackles complex mathematical reasoning with impressive benchmark performance. Perhaps most intriguing is Qwen3-Audio, which adds speech processing for transcription and voice interaction. Read more →
I hope you find these articles as interesting as I did.
Cheers to your new week; build things that matter!