James Cooper

Brit living in New York. Tech • Finance • Cyclist

[Boring_Business @BoringBiz_]

One thing I can’t stop thinking about is that if you took the leading AI models (ChatGPT 5.6, Claude Fable) today, and showed its capabilities to someone back in 2019, they would legitimately believe you were doing magic

In 2026, we have become so used to these capabilities that we take it for granted. The human brain has incredible capability for adaptation, and it happens for both the good and the bad

We adapt very well to harsh circumstances, but we also adapt just as quickly to technological progress. For our brains to be satisfied, the progress treadmill must keep running on forever

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Here is what all these sideline commentators don’t understand:

THERE IS NO PRICE DUMPING IN OPEN SOURCE AI

China can price dump in manufacturing. Why? Because we destroyed our means of equivalent production and so can’t do the same.

But manufacturing is not AI.

China CANNOT price dump in open source AI. Why? Because everything in open source, by definition, is public domain and available to everyone at no cost. The most important thing that this means is that we can do the same thing as China as long as we have the will and the people to do it. And we have both.

- America is still the leader in frontier AI.
- America has the smartest developers.
- America has the most creative engineers.
- America has the leading silicon.
- America has the most advanced clouds.

The biggest risk in America is we are short electricity and China has a surplus of it.

So if they can somewhat catch up in some of the other areas above, they could beat us.

But as of right now, we are leading. There is no price dumping. We also want the price of intelligence tokens to go to zero.

So let’s get on with it and finish this on the field. But don’t fall for a stupid analogy.

[The New York Times @nytimes]

From @TheAthleticFC: It is never just a football game where England and Argentina are concerned. Their first meeting in 21 years is a World Cup semifinal, and this is a rivalry built around historical tensions, controversies and bitter feuds. https://t.co/DkAmaxrqTu

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

🚨 ESCAPE FROM NYC!

People across New York City are making a decision they never thought they’d have to make.

They’re leaving.

For many, it’s a combination of high rent, rising everyday costs, concerns about crime, frustration with city leadership, and feeling like the city they once loved has changed.

More and more moving trucks seem to be part of the skyline now. It’s a sad sight when people who built their lives in a city feel their best option is to pack up and start over somewhere else.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Tesla is one of the smartest, cracked and most advanced engineering companies in the world.

If they actually did this, then it is likely verifiably true that a dollar above $200/week is waste.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

We raised a $135M Series A!

8090’s Series A was led by Salesforce Ventures and joined by WNDR, Craft Ventures, The Production Board, and LAUNCH.

We also had the support of a group of esteemed angels including Nikesh Arora, Cliff Robbins, Adam D’Angelo, Shyam Ravindran, Abhi Arun, and Thomas Laffont.

We’re grateful for their support. It validates 8090’s mission and traction so far, but mostly it accelerates the work ahead.

The capital will go to two places. The first is hiring more people, because the demand we have is accelerating rapidly. The second is investing in the compute and infrastructure needed to keep delivering our solutions at high quality and reliability.

8090 works with the biggest, hardest, most demanding customers in the most regulated industries: healthcare, insurance, life sciences, aerospace, energy, manufacturing, financial services, and the United States government. We help them win by using our AI-enabled Software Factory to design and build entire new systems, refactor old ones, and find and accelerate their edge.

Our view is that as Software Factory is used more and more to do mission-critical work inside industries with the least tolerance for error and the most oversight, it will be used to bring transparency, consistency and control to work everywhere.

And as we expand the potential of the biggest organizations, we are also building a playbook and a series of network effects into Software Factory that will be valuable to everyone, from SMBs to solo founders.

With much gratitude, back to work…

PS - A note on why I am doing this as CEO, rather than from the board.

This is one of those rare moments when the technological ground is moving so ferociously underneath all of us that the decisions made in the next few years will set the stage for the next twenty.

AI can be the grand equalizer. It is the thing that can give everybody a shot, and I would like to help it achieve that potential. Since I left Facebook, I was waiting for a moment like this to return to a full-time operating role. I was a demanding manager back then, but I felt I had no choice given how powerful and undeniable what we were building was. I am convinced that what we are building now is even more important, so there was no decision to make except to be all in.

[Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. @ParikPatelCFA]

He stopped making his coffee at home

[Thierry from arvy 🇨🇭 @ThierryBorgeat]

SpaceX $SPCX traded 256 million shares yesterday.

The entire public float is 556 million.

So in one day, almost half of every tradable share changed hands. Bought and sold, over and over, in a few hours.

Here's why that number is absurd. SpaceX sold 555.6 million shares at $135 to raise $75 billion. That float is barely 4% of the company. Musk and insiders hold the other 96%, locked up and unable to sell.

Tiny supply. Enormous demand. Index funds that have to own it, retail that wants to, traders chasing the move.

The result is a $2 trillion company that trades like a penny stock. Up to $211 pre-market, swinging double-digit percentages between coffees.

This is what happens when you list 4% of the seventh-largest company in America and let the world fight over the scraps.

The price isn't telling you what SpaceX is worth.

It's telling you how few shares there are to buy.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihteshamali]

Jeff Bezos went on CNBC today and said AI won't eliminate jobs. It will create a shortage of workers. Every economist warning about unemployment has it completely backwards.

His reasoning is straightforward.

When productivity explodes, the basket of goods people can afford gets cheaper. A two-earner household becomes a one-earner household. Not because someone got fired. Because they no longer need the second income.

People working overtime stop working overtime. Not because the job disappeared. Because they can finally afford not to.

His exact words: "What's actually going to happen is we're going to have labor scarcity as a result. People are going to have to work hard."

Then he went further.

He compared AI to penicillin. To solar cells. To the iPhone. His point: transformative inventions don't get hoarded by the people who build them. They spread through society and raise the floor for everyone.

"The inventions themselves spread throughout society and improve life."

The job loss narrative is loud because scared people share more than optimistic ones.

Bezos isn't dismissing the fear. He's saying the people feeding it are solving the wrong equation.

The question was never how many jobs AI destroys.

It was always how much it costs to live.

SOURCE: CNBC

[Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. @ParikPatelCFA]

I am starting an AI lab focused on training state of the art foundational models

I will never release this model or show it externally because it is too dangerous to release. But I promise I have it and that it’s really good

Raising at a $1 trillion pre-money valuation

[Career Mindset X @careerlevelup]

he's right on the timing, the earliest layoff waves happened before ai was even useful at production

scale, those cuts were rate-driven, zirp ending, and "ai made us leaner" got bolted on later because it sounds better to investors than "we hired badly in 2021"

worth knowing jensen has his own angle, he sells the chips, so it benefits him to defend ai's reputation against the "no roi" story, separating "ai didn't cause these layoffs" from "ai isn't working" protects the buying case for his product, the argument still lands, just notice the messenger

the simple version, early cuts were macro and bolted on an ai story, later cuts have some real ai mix, execs blend them under one label because it sells

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

Jensen Huang just called out every CEO using AI as an excuse to fire people.

He says layoffs tied to AI “don’t make any sense” because “AI just arrived.”

“The narrative that connects AI to job loss… it is just too lazy.”

“AI has just arrived. How is it possible they’re already losing jobs?”

“How is it possible that AI became productive and useful only 6 months ago, and they were somehow laying people off two years ago because of AI?”

“It doesn’t make any sense. It was just a way for them to sound smart. And I REALLY HATE that.”

A recent survey of nearly 6,000 executives found that 89% of companies have seen no measurable productivity gains from AI.

Here we have the CEO of the most valuable AI company on earth, NVIDIA, telling you that the layoffs you’re seeing are not about AI. They’re about CEOs who found a convenient story and ran with it.

And he hates it.

[Julian @julianblacks_]

My wife just got laid off by Meta.

We knew the writing was on the wall. But I want to give a little background.

Meta a couple months back had a company-wide AI week. During this week Meta halted all day-to-day work and required all employees to familiarize themselves with AI.

At the end of the week, each employee was required to have the early stages of an AI tool to be used internally by Meta.

[LayoffHedge @LayoffAI]

The first 8,000 Meta layoffs hit Wednesday. What's happening to the people still employed and the anxiety of not knowing if you’re next is insane.

SF Standard published an interview with an anonymous Meta employee ahead of the cuts. They used a voice actor. Meta started keystroke-logging staff.

Inside the company right now:

Internal leaderboards rank employees by how many AI tokens they burn. By minutes spent in the chatbot. Workers are openly admitting they ask the bot inane questions to pad their numbers, because being on the wrong end of the leaderboard is a risk signal.

HR told the all-hands AI usage won't factor into layoffs. The leaderboard exists anyway.

AI notes are auto-on in every video meeting. People manually disable them so they can talk candidly about who might be next.

How you find out you're laid off: 7am email to your personal inbox. By the time you read it, your work accounts are already dead. So one Meta engineer wrote a script that scrapes internal profiles to see whose status flipped to deactivated. This employee runs a personal spreadsheet on top of it to track coworkers.

An internal post suggested teams who successfully build their own AI replacement should get 5 years of comp and then be let go as a reward for replacing themselves. It got heavy upvotes.

Zuckerberg's all-hands message, paraphrased: AI is moving fast, nobody knows what's coming, leadership is doing their best.

This is the Hidden Layoff in operation. The headline number is 8,000. A whole different story is what's being done to those still employed. Surveilled. Ranked by AI usage. Asked to train their replacement. Told to suck it up.

Employee's words: "Even if we haven't lost our jobs to AI yet, we're being commoditized in advance."

We reported on the 6,000 additional new roles they cancelled earlier this week, along with the additional 8,000 layoffs planned later in 2026. That’s 22,000 roles either cancelled or cut for 2026.

Now we have insight into how they’re deciding who comes next.

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase:

Team,

Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the future.

Why now
Two forces are converging at the same time. We need to be front footed to respond to both.

First, the market. Coinbase is well-capitalized, has diversified revenue streams, and is well-positioned to weather any storm. Crypto is also on the verge of the next wave of adoption, with stablecoins, prediction markets, tokenization, and more taking off. However, our business is still volatile from quarter to quarter. While we've managed through that cyclicality many times before and come out stronger on the other side, we’re currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster, and more efficient for our next phase of growth.

Second, AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated. The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day.

All of this has led us to an inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company. The biggest risk now is not taking action. We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core.

What this means
To get there, we are not just reducing headcount and cutting costs, we’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it. What does this mean in practice?

- Fewer layers, faster decisions: We are flattening our org structure to 5 layers max below CEO/COO. Layers slow things down and create coordination tax. The future is small, high context teams that can move quickly. Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. Fewer layers also means a leaner cost structure that is built to perform through all market cycles.

- No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams.

- AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role.

In short: AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era. This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.

To those who are affected
I know there are real people behind these decisions — talented colleagues who have poured themselves into this company and our mission. To those of you who will be leaving: thank you. You’ve helped build Coinbase into what it is today, and I am sincerely grateful for everything you've done.

All impacted team members will receive an email to their personal account in the next hour with more information, and an invitation to meet with an HRBP and a senior leader in your organization. Coinbase system access has been removed today. I know this feels sudden and harsh, but it is the only responsible choice given our duty to protect customer information.

To those affected, we will be providing a comprehensive package to support you through this transition. US employees will receive a minimum of 16 weeks base pay (plus 2 weeks per year worked), their next equity vest, and 6 months of COBRA. Employees on a work visa will get extra transition support. Those outside of the US will receive similar support, based on local factors and subject to any consultation requirements.

Coinbase prides itself on talent density. Our employees are among the most talented people in the world, and I have no doubt that your skills and experience will be highly sought after as you pursue your next chapters.

How we move forward
To the team that is staying, I know this is a difficult day. We’re saying goodbye to colleagues and friends you've been in the trenches with. But here’s what I want you to know as we move forward together:

Over the past 13 years, we have weathered four crypto winters, gone public, and built the most trusted platform in our industry. We’ve made it this far by making hard decisions and by always staying focused on our mission. This time will be no different – nothing has changed about the long term outlook of our company or industry. And most importantly, our mission has never been more important for the world. Increasing economic freedom requires a new financial system, and we’re building it.

The Coinbase that emerges from this will be more capable than ever to achieve our mission.

Brian

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Will the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling be a disaster for Democrats? Election analyst Sean Trende on the fallout from a major decision. https://t.co/Xs5KI1Yvgv

[signüll @signulll]

msft, goog, meta, & amazon are on track to spend ~$700b on ai infrastructure in 2026.

this kinda spending usually happens via govts or wars whereas this time, it’s four companies racing to build the foundational mechanics of agi.

kinda insane that the next layer of civilization is being ~entirely privately financed before most govts even understand what’s being built. has this ever happened before?!

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

Spoke at the AI club at Stanford last night. 1000 people tried to attend. Seating was capped at 250.

It was pandemonium at the end! If you’re a resilient, gritty engineer, PM, designer or GTM person, please consider working with us:

- We have no org chart - everyone reports to me. We do this to minimize politics, titles and force natural leaders to self organize.
- We are severely under manned for the work we have (by design) so you are forced to engineer your way out. Build solutions not orgs.
- We will book nine figures this year and are growing very quickly. Our customers span all major parts of the US Economy.

[email protected]

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

If the leadership in the AI movement doesn’t step up quickly, organize around the right “go to market” and create incentives to align everyone, this will be a generational fumble.

It is, sadly, happening before our eyes.

[Collin Rugg @CollinRugg]

JUST IN: Mt. Everest guides accused of “poisoning” climbers to trigger helicopter rescues as part of an insurance scam.

The guides have allegedly been lacing hikers' food and pressuring them into taking expensive rescue helicopter evacuations.

"Guides with the trekking agencies allegedly poisoned tourists by putting baking soda in their food to trigger severe gastrointestinal distress that mimicked altitude sickness or food poisoning," the New York Post reports.

Operators would allegedly then forge medical documents and flight documents to charge international travel insurers.

According to police, the groups have received $19.69 million in insurance payouts.

Police in Nepal have charged 32 individuals for organized crime and fraud, including trekking company owners, helicopter operators, and hospital executives.