ilan abehassera

Working on something new in Agentic AI ✨ || Operator & Investor
Founded @originsvc, @async_com, and more

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

Enough with Newsletters? Say hello to Audioletters 🥹

Once a week. A 5mn-long voice note on tech, education, society, and more. Say hello to my new Audioletter 🎙️ powered by @async_com and @beehiiv.

👉 https://t.co/P4P7rgisJO

I’ve been a podcaster for a while (@OuiAreNY), and I’ve always been frustrated not being able to hear and see my listeners’ reactions to specific parts of the episodes I was recording.

Our mission at Async is to let anyone start an asynchronous conversation and it all begins with a voice note. Think emails, but with a human touch, your voice.

☄️ Meet my Audioletter 🎙️, where once a week, I’ll share my thoughts on anything I have in mind as a CEO, investor, and dad (you could even expect some occasional guests 🫶). Typically, something I could have posted on my LinkedIn or Twitter and should flow well as a voice note.

⏰ 5mn, not one minute more.

📜 You’ll have access to an AI summary, the full transcript, and will be able to react at any time of the note and interact with myself and other listeners. No Async account required.

I hope you’ll like this format and its content 🫣. Tell your friends if you do!

My first Audioletter goes out exclusively to all my subscribers on Wednesday, sign up now to get it first.

PS: thx @GregLuntX for the inspiration 🫶

[America’s Got Talent @AGT]

bonjour @kevadamsss, don't leave @EmmanuelMacron hanging!

[Andrew Gazdecki @agazdecki]

Startup founders realizing their "power users" are all on the free plan:

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

@obrien @paulichon 😆

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

AI has become a black hole for capital.
$242B into AI startups in Q1. $2.52T total AI spend this year. Almost every other sector just got starved.
The question used to be "does AI work?"
Now it's "how fast can it justify a multi-trillion price tag before the trough of disillusionment hits?"
Reckoning loading. Brutal for hype. Best 18 months in years for serious builders, imho.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Where will AI be in 1, 2 or 3 years?

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

@Clara_Gold Worst place in the world socially.

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

🤯🤯🤯🤯

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

SpaceXAI and @cursor_ai are now working closely together to create the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI.

The combination of Cursor’s leading product and distribution to expert software engineers with SpaceX’s million H100 equivalent Colossus training supercomputer will allow us to build the world’s most useful models.

Cursor has also given SpaceX the right to acquire Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for our work together.

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

Overheard at the office : « AI agents are the Ozempic of software: they make the bloat disappear » 🫠

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

BREAKING: Jewish Insider reveals that Zohran Mamdani’s wife was mass-liking Instagram posts on October 7th, celebrating the massacre in real time.

This is who they are.

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

@VividProwess 🤯

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

@benln #1 https://t.co/gYuXEv7ogA

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

Leadership

[jack @jack]

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company.

####

today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone.

first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay.

we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly.

i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures.

a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers.

we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold.

to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward.

to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow.

jack

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

@mitchdeg ça sent le touchscreen sur les laptops

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

@Alexoppenheimer @fabricegrinda

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

😅

[Gublo @Gubloinvestor]

If Trump was born in other countries 😄

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

Makes sense then

[The Humanoid Hub @TheHumanoidHub]

San Francisco-based Weave Robotics has started taking orders for its laundry-folding home robot, Isaac 0. Available for Bay Area residents only.

Price is $8k upfront or a $450/month subscription. Deliveries begin this month.

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

@mitchdeg @knafo_sarah 100%, je viens de finir l'interview qu'elle a donné a @Mattintouch sur @gdiypodcast, j'ai été bluffé aussi. A seulement 32 ans... L'âge est devenu irrelevant

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

@sama “More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the US” 🔪🔪🔪🩸😅

[ilan abehassera @ilan]

@BillAckman @NYCMayor wow, unbelievable