Tue. 07/01 – Superhuman Finds A Home

Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Tuesday, July 1st, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Meta Super Intelligence Labs is official. Cloudflare's tool to help websites fend off AI bots is official. Will Apple throw in the towel and just buy some AI off the shelf? Amazon now have more robots than human workers in its warehouses, and my hands-down, can't-live-without-you app finds a home. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.

Well, it's official. In a memo, Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta Superintelligence Labs and 11 new hires for that group. Nat Friedman will, quote, partner with Alexander Wang to lead the new group, quoting Bloomberg. Zuckerberg wrote Monday to employees that Meta's AI efforts will fall under this new group called Meta Superintelligence Labs, or MSL, which will be led by Alexander Wang, the former CEO of data labeling startup Scale AI. According to an internal memo,

reviewed by Bloomberg. Wang, whom Zuckerberg called the most impressive founder of his generation, will serve as chief AI officer. Nat Friedman, the former CEO of GitHub, will partner. With Alex to lead the group, Zuckerberg continued and head Meta's work on AI products and applied research. Bloomberg previously reported on Zuckerberg's effort to recruit a new superintelligence group.

As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight, Zuckerberg wrote in the internal post. I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for meta to lead the way.

Meta will spend, quote, hundreds of billions on AI projects and research in the years to come, Zuckerberg has said, though the Facebook founder also expects that many firms will likely overspend on AI in an effort to avoid missing the wave.

There's a meaningful chance that a lot of the companies are overbuilding now, he said last summer. But on the flip side, I actually think all the companies that are investing are making a rational decision because the downside of being behind is that you're out of position for like the most important technology for the next.

10 to 15 years. The new MSL unit will include the company's existing teams focused on large language models, which is the technology that underpins generative AI, as well as AI products and fundamental AI research known as FAIR. Meta is also creating a new lab focused on developing the next generation of our models, Zuckerberg wrote, end quote.

This was long rumored, but obviously this is official now too. Cloudflare this morning debuted Pay Per Crawl, a marketplace that lets websites charge AI crawlers per crawl. New sites using Cloudflare going forward will now block AI crawlers by default, quoting TechCrunch.

It's called Paper Crawl, and Cloudflare is launching the experiment in private beta on Tuesday. Website owners in the experiment can choose to let AI crawlers on an individual basis scrape their site at a set rate, a micropayment for every single crawl.

Alternatively, website owners can choose to let AI crawlers scrape their site for free or block them altogether. Cloudflare claims its tools will let website owners see whether crawlers are scraping their site for AI training data to appear in AI search responses or for other purposes. At scale, Cloudflare's marketplace is a big idea that could offer publishers a potential business model for the AI era, and it also places Cloudflare at the center of it all.

The launch of the marketplace comes at a time when news publishers are facing existential questions about how to reach readers as Google search traffic fades away and AI chatbots rise in popularity. There's not a clear answer for how news publishers will survive in the AI era. Some, such as the New York Times, have filed lawsuits against tech companies for training their AI models on news articles without permission.

Meanwhile, other publishers have struck multi-year deals to license their content for AI model training and to have their content appear in AI chatbot responses. Even so, only large publishers have struck AI licensing deals, and it's still unclear whether they provide meaningful sources.

revenue. Cloudflare aims to create a more durable system where publishers can set prices on their own terms. The company also announced Tuesday that new websites set up with Cloudflare will now by default block all AI crawlers. Site owners will have to grant certain

AI crawlers' permission to access their site, a change Cloudflare says will give every new domain the default of control. Several large publishers, including Conde Nast, Time, The Associated Press, The Atlantic, Adweek, and Fortune have signed on with Cloudflare to block AI crawlers. by default in support of the company's broader goal of a permission-based approach to crawling.

The business model that many of these publishers relied on for decades is slowly becoming unreliable. Historically, online publishers have allowed Google to scrape their sites in return for referrals in Google Search, which translates to traffic to their sites and ultimately add revenue.

However, new data from Cloudflare suggests that publishers may be getting a worse deal in the AI era than in the Google Search era. While some websites cite ChatGPT as a major traffic source, that doesn't appear to be the case broadly. This June, Cloudflare says it found that Google's crawler scraped its websites 14 times for every referral it gave them.

Meanwhile, OpenAI's crawler scraped websites 17,000 times for every one referral, while Anthropic scraped websites 73,000 times for every referral, end quote. Maybe Mark Gurman got pissed at Ming-Chi Kuo biting his Monday style on yesterday's episode.

Because today he has a piece up confirming that Apple's Mike Rockwell and Craig Federighi have started a project to evaluate external models of AI to power Siri. Apparently, after testing, Anthropics tech seemed the most promising. Quote, if Apple ultimately moves forward, it would represent a monumental reversal. The company currently powers most of its AI features with homegrown technology that it calls Apple Foundation models.

and had been planning a new version of its voice assistant that runs on that technology for 2026. A switch to Anthropik's Claude or OpenAI's ChatGPT models for Siri would be an acknowledgement that the company is struggling to compete in generative AI, the most important new technology in decades. Apple already allows ChatGPT to answer web-based search queries in Siri, but the Assistant itself is powered by Apple.

Apple's investigation into third-party models is at an early stage, and the company hasn't made a final decision on using them, the people said. A competing project internally dubbed LLM Siri that uses in-house models remains in active development.

The project to evaluate external models was started by Siri chief Mike Rockwell and software engineering head Craig Federighi. They were given oversight of Siri after the duties were removed from the command of John Gianandrea, the company's AI chief. He was sidelined in the wake of... of a tepid response to Apple intelligence and Siri feature delays.

Rockwell, who previously launched the Vision Pro headset, assumed the Siri engineering role in March. After taking over, he instructed his new group to assess whether Siri would do a better job handling queries using Apple's AI models or third-party technology, including Claw, ChatGPT, and...

Alphabet's Google Gemini. People with knowledge of Apple's AI team say it is operating with a high degree of uncertainty and a lack of clarity, with executives still pouring over a number of possible directions. Apple has already approved a multi-billion dollar budget for 2026 for running its own models via the cloud, but its plans for beyond that remain murky.

Still, Federighi, Rockwell and other executives have grown increasingly open to the idea that embracing outside technology is the key to a near-term turnaround. They don't see the need for Apple to rely on its own models, which they currently consider inferior, when it can partner with third parties instead, according to the people. In the future, if its own technology improves, the executives believe Apple should have ownership of AI models, given their increasing importance.

The company is working on a series of projects including a tabletop robot and glasses that will make heavy use of AI. Apple has also recently considered acquiring perplexity in order to help bolster its AI work. Bloomberg has reported it also briefly held discussions with Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Mirati, end quote. There's a great new way to have a great time with friends without the boos or the bad decisions.

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Amazon says it has now deployed over 1 million robots in its warehouses, its most ever, and close now to equaling its human workforce in terms of individual numbers, with 75% of global deliveries now aided by robotics. Quoting the journal,

One of Amazon's newer robots called Vulcan has a sense of touch that enables it to pick items from numerous shelves. Amazon has taken recent steps to connect its robots to its order fulfillment processes so the machines can work in tandem with each other and with humans. They're one step closer to that realization of the full integration of robotics, said Ruben Schribben, the research manager at Internet Analysis, a robotics consulting firm.

Now, some 75% of Amazon's global deliveries are assisted in some way by robotics, the company said. The growing automation has helped Amazon improve productivity while easing pressure on the company to solve problems such as heavy staff turnover at its fulfillment centers.

For some Amazon workers, the increasing automation has meant replacing menial, repetitive work, lifting, pulling, and sorting with more skilled assignments, managing the machines. I thought I was going to be doing heavy lifting. I thought I was going to be walking like crazy, said Nisha Cruz. who spent five years picking items at an Amazon warehouse in Windsor, Connecticut, before she was trained to oversee robotic systems.

Today, she sits in front of a computer screen in a Tempe, Arizona office, making sure mobile robots inside Amazon facilities across the US are working properly. She earns about 2.5 times more pay than she did when she started at Amazon. Robots are also supplanting some employees, helping the company to slow hiring. Amazon employs about 1.56 million people overall, with the majority working in warehouses.

The average number of employees Amazon had per facility last year, roughly 670, was the lowest recorded in the past 16 years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis which compared the company's reported workforce with estimates of its facility count. The number of packages that Amazon ships itself per employee each year has also steadily increased since at least 2015 to about 3,870 from about 175, the analysis found, an indication of the

gains. Some of Amazon's newer facilities, such as those built for same-day delivery, have smaller employee footprints and help us deliver with greater speed, a company spokesman said. Amazon is also rolling out artificial intelligence in its warehouses. Chief Executive Andy Jassy said recently, to improve inventory placement, demand forecasting, and the efficiency of our robots. Amazon said it will cut the size of its total workforce in the next several years.

The second largest private employer in the U.S., Amazon is a bellwether for a range of businesses automating work around the country. Its broad rollout of robots shows how technological advances are accelerating, transforming factory floors, and rippling through labor markets.

The company began introducing advanced robotics to its warehouses after it paid $775 million in 2012 to buy Kiva Systems, which made robots that ferried shelves of products around. Early on, robots moved large amounts of unpackaged items a physically difficult task for a human to do, but over time, the machines began taking on even more challenging assignments such as packaging, sorting products, and lifting heavy items, end quote.

X, the artist formerly known as Twitter, has hired Nikita Beer, the serial entrepreneur who was behind pulling startup TBH and teen-focused social network Gas as its new head of product, quoting Bloomberg. Bier is a relentless ex-user and tweeted at Musk in April 2022, floating himself as a candidate to run product at the company shortly after Musk acquired the social network for $44 billion.

Ladies and gentlemen, I've officially posted my way to the top, BR wrote Monday announcing the new role. Musk quoted his post welcoming him to the team. Ask for comment, a spokesperson for X pointed to Musk's message. Bier sold a polling startup called TBH to then-Facebook in 2017 and a teen-focused social network called Gas to Discord in 2023.

Beer joins X after the company recently merged with Musk's artificial intelligence startup XAI, and the two businesses have been sharing engineering resources and other talent. It's not immediately clear how much beer will work with XAI's product, but there has been overlap between the businesses, most notably on the development and distribution of the company's AI chatbot, Grok.

While I already spend every waking hour on this app, I'll now be spending that time helping others unlock that same value being posted. And we'll certainly be leveraging the power of Grok to create hyper-relevant timelines and help people understand everything that's happening, end quote.

you Finally today, from the if-you-know-you-know file, Grammarly is acquiring email startup Superhuman as part of a push to build an AI-powered productivity suite, quoting Reuters. The San Francisco-based company's decline to disclose the financial terms of the deal. Superhuman, once an exclusive email tool boasting a long waitlist for new users, was last valued at $825 million in 2021 and currently has annual revenue of about $30 million.

Graham Early's acquisition of Superhuman follows its recent $1 billion funding from General Catalyst, which gives it dry powder to create a collection of AI-powered workplace tools. Founded in 2005, the company has over 40 million daily users and an annual revenue exceeding 700 million. It's working on a name change with an ambition to expand beyond grammar correction. Superhuman, with over $110 million in funding from investors...

including IVP and Andreessen Horowitz, has been trying to create an efficient email experience by integrating AI. The company claims its users send and respond to 72% more emails per hour. and the percentage of emails composed with its AI tools has increased fivefold in the past year. It also faces growing competition as email giants from Google to Microsoft are adding more AI features. Email continues to be the dominant communication tool for the world.

world. Professionals spend something like three hours a day in their inboxes. It's by far the most used work app, foundational to any productivity suite, said Shashir Mehrota, CEO of Grammarly. Superhuman is the obvious leading innovator in the space. Last year's purchase of startup Coda gave Grammarly a platform for AI agents to help users research, analyze, and collaborate. Email, according to Marota, who co-founded Coda, was the next logical step. Superhuman CEO Rahul Vora will join.

Grammarly as part of the deal along with over 100 superhuman employees. The superhuman product team and brand will continue. Merota said, it's a very well-used product by tens of thousands of people, and we want to see them continue to make progress. Forrest said that the deal will give superhuman access to significantly greater resources and allow it...

to invest more heavily in AI, as well as expand into calendars, tasks, and collaboration tools. Marota and Voros see an opportunity to integrate Grammarly's AI agents directly into Superhuman.

and build the tools for enterprise customers. The vision is for users to tap into a network of specialized agents, pulling data from across their digital workflows, such as emails and documents, which will reduce time spent searching for information or crafting responses. The company is also entering a crowded... space of AI productivity tools competing with tech giants such as Salesforce and a wave of startups, end quote.

I said it was, if you know, you know, because longtime listeners might remember that when Superhuman first came out, I was entirely dismissive of it. Who would pay so much for an email client? Why do I have to have a personal onboarding just to use it?

but after having used Superhuman for a few years now, when I say I could not live without it, that is maybe even underselling it. You could take a lot of apps away from me, and I would still somehow survive, but if Superhuman went away, I might have to... go off and live in the woods somewhere or something. It's that vital to me at this point. If you know, you know. Talk to you tomorrow.