Hey there, it's your friendly neighborhood mailman, back with the weekly scoop! And boy, was it a doozy! Besides the usual game of "Who Can Launch the Most Pointy Things" between Israel, Iran, and the US, Poland's been busy turning its border with Russia into a real-life Minesweeper game, minus the reset button. Meanwhile, Austria had a tragic school shooting, reminding us that some headlines are no laughing matter. Over in the EU Parliament, they decided to play superhero by outlawing AI-generated child abuse images, because even robots need to know when they've crossed the line. And just when you thought it couldn't get any wilder, storms decided to crash Croatia's party.

Answer to last week’s question: 48% of businesses use AI in some daily capacity. The sample size was around 32,000 respondants.

When you think about it, AI has brought us something that is truly incredible - a true game changer - it's made experimenting and learning from the real world - otherwise not easily accessible - super quick and practically free!

Remember how development used to feel like climbing a mountain? You had to carefully plan each step: design, write specs, build everything, test it thoroughly, and finally launch it - do you remember that moment? Waiting to see if all the work had paid off? Just to see if your idea worked! It could take forever (weeks or even months), and if you made a mistake, ouch! By the time you got any feedback, you might have already moved on to something else.

And this is now where AI comes into play. It truly is like magic:

You can lean a lot more into prototyping - and I mean a lot more - than before without worrying about the costs involved!

You can create Minimum Viable Products in days!

You can have fun testing different conversations, trying out different words and designs, and see what works best!

And all of that in real-time.

No need to make everything perfect - just jump in and learn what works!

And you know what's funny? The big challenge isn't writing perfect code anymore - it is about taking the first step of putting your Minimum Viable Product out there for the world to see.

The real question is: How will you use this amazing opportunity?

Today, we remember George Orwell, born on June 25, 1903—a journalist, novelist, and truth-teller whose works continue to shape our conversations about freedom, truth, and power.

📚 His most famous works, 1984 and Animal Farm, weren’t just dystopian fiction—they were early diagnostics of how information, language, and authority could be manipulated to control populations.

Fast-forward to 2025, and terms like “Big Brother”, “doublethink”, and “thoughtcrime” are no longer literary metaphors—they’re part of our everyday vocabulary.

💬 “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

– George Orwell

In a tiny Swedish village, a 5-year-old boy began selling matchsticks door to door on foot. That boy was Ingvar Kamprad—and within a few decades, he would build one of the world’s most recognizable brands: IKEA.

But IKEA wasn’t built on flashy VC funding or glossy showrooms. It was built on frugality, obsession with efficiency, and the belief that design should be democratic—available to everyone, not just the elite.

Ingvar grew up in Småland, a hard, forested region where every krona counted. He showed early business instinct—selling pens, postcards, even fish—before registering IKEA at age 17 with a small loan. By 1948, furniture had become the bestseller in his tiny catalog.

But the genius wasn’t just in selling cheap furniture. It was in reimagining how furniture could be bought, shipped, and assembled. Ingvar introduced the flat-pack, self-serve model we now associate with IKEA: efficient for shipping, thrillingly affordable for customers, and a radical shift from traditional retail.

Kamprad refused outside funding. He bought land, owned stores, and stockpiled cash. Why? To stay independent and resilient.

X CEO Linda Yaccarino told the Financial Times that users will “soon” be able to invest and trade directly within X, part of Elon Musk's quest to build an all‑in‑one super app akin to WeChat. After a slump post‑2022, X reports 96% of advertisers have returned, supported by projected revenue growth (from $1.9 B in 2024 to ~$2.3 B in 2025), though still shy of its pre‑takeover peak of $4.1 B

🌟 Why It Matters?

If successful, X can challenge incumbents like PayPal, Cash App, and Apple/Google Pay, mirroring models like WeChat that blend messaging, payments, and shopping. Allowing trading, tipping, and commerce within X can significantly reshape user engagement and monetization. Regulatory compliance will be critical as will proving trust in handling user finances.

Collaboration in the automotive industry has always been a challenge. OEMs and Tier1s alike have always understood the value but never could come to terms with what it entails.

Yesterday, major German OEMs BMW, Mercedes & Porsche together with automotive suppliers Continental, Hella, Valeo, Bosch & ZF as well as automotive software companies ETAS, Vector & Elektrobit signed a Memorandum of Understanding to form an Automotive-Grade Open Source Software Ecosystem.

🌟 Why It Matters?

Automotive companies have been spending a tremendous amount of money on the creation of software assets, competing and fighting for the same talent only to create the same things when they should have been focusing on differentiation and collaboration.

We are certainly entering a new chapter if the goals of this new collaboration can actually be acchieved

Neuralink to make its first visual implants - Human trials to begin soon

Check It Out! Rubin Observatory Reveals First Glimpses of Stunning Space Images - Rubin's image is a composite of 678 individual observations, taken over the course of seven hours.

Beat the Heat - It’s about more than just chugging water

Adobe has just rolled out a snazzy new app for iPhones called Project Indigo, crafted by none other than Marc Levoy, the wizard behind Google's Pixel cameras. This app, available for iPhone 12 Pro and newer, snaps a flurry of photos faster than you can say "cheese" to deliver images so crisp and clear, they might just make your old vacation pics weep with envy. With manual controls for focus and shutter speed, it’s like having a mini SLR in your pocket, minus the neck strain. Levoy and his partner-in-crime, Florian Kainz, have penned a blog post that dives into the app's bells and whistles, and even teases future plans like an Android version and video recording. Project Indigo is Adobe's latest attempt to make your phone's camera so good, it might just put your old point-and-shoot to shame.

Wondering how the AI's biggest players, the Big Five, are doing? Take a look at Apple’s, Google’s, Meta’s, Microsoft’s, and Amazon’s infrastructure, models, partners, data, distribution, core business, scarcity risk, and more.

Oh and then there is China…

Have you heard of Gaia, Mistral, Ollama, LocalAI or TerminalGPT? If yes, then dive right in here, if not read on.

AI chatbots have burst onto the scene like a toddler on a sugar high, and at the front of this digital parade is OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But hold your horses, because even this chatbot superhero has its kryptonite: it’s cloud-based, has privacy issues that could make a diary blush, and isn’t open source. So, if you’re a developer itching to run AI on your own turf, a researcher poking at models like they’re a science fair project, or just someone who’s had it up to here with usage limits, rejoice!

The open-source AI universe is exploding with local alternatives that let you be the boss of your chatbot; offline, private, and as customisable as a pizza with all the toppings.

🌟 Why It Matters

In a plot twist worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster, Israeli solo developer Maor Shlomo decided to kick off 2025 by founding Base44, a company that would soon make waves in the ocean of AI powered coders. By June, Wix swooped in like a seagull, snapping up the AI-powered "vibe-coding" platform for a cool $80 million in cash. In just half a year, Base44 had gathered 250,000 users, reached profitability with $189,000 in monthly profit, and attracted top-tier clients like eToro and SimilarWeb, all while being bootstrapped. Although the tale is often spun as a solo founder epic, Shlomo had a trusty band of eight merry tech wizards by his side. Wix, not one to skimp on the goodies, threw in a $25 million retention bonus for the team

💡 Why it matters

Base44’s dramatic ROI, going from zero to an $80M exit in half a year, underscores how AI can turbocharge product development and go-to-market speed. Vibe-coding illustrates a shift from drag-and-drop platforms to AI-first approaches that handle full-stack workflows automatically.