AI Phones > iPhones?

Welcome back apprentices! 👋

New York, 1973: A Motorola engineer makes the first-ever mobile call using a phone the size of a toddler and a battery life shorter than a TikTok trend. 

2007: Steve Jobs walks on stage, waves around the first iPhone, and suddenly, we can’t live without touchscreens, apps, and the ability to doom-scroll at 2 AM.

Now it’s 2025, and Deutsche Telekom is throwing another curveball: No more apps. No more searching, tapping, or swiping. Just AI handling everything before you even ask. Need a ride? Reserved. Hungry? Ordered. Emails? Summarized. Your phone, but with an actual brain.

Brilliant? Terrifying? A guaranteed way to forget how to do anything yourself? 

Let’s break it down.  

In today's email

• AI to Tackle Clinical Documentation

• Anthropic Scores $3.5B

• OpenAI’s AI Agents Cost Up to $20K/Month

• AI Stock Watch (New)

• The Next Big Shift in Smartphones?

• More Tools & Updates

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Quick News 

🚑 How much time do doctors waste on paperwork? Microsoft’s Dragon Copilot thinks it’s time to flip the script. This AI assistant combines voice dictation with ambient listening, automatically cranking out clinical notes, referral letters, and other admin nightmares so doctors can focus on saving lives instead of wrestling with their keyboards. 
Launching May 2025 (U.S. & Canada.)

💰 Anthropic just tripled its valuation to $61.5B after securing a $3.5B Series E round, proving that AI money is still flowing like VC champagne. Backed by Lightspeed, Salesforce, Cisco, and Fidelity, the funds will boost AI development, expand computing power, and fuel global growth.

💼 OpenAI is rolling out AI agents with subscription fees ranging from $2,000 to $20,000 a month — basically, the SaaS version of hiring a PhD without the coffee addiction. With SoftBank throwing in $3B for 2025, these AI specialists could bring in 25% of OpenAI’s long-term revenue as the company moves beyond chatbots into high-priced digital brainpower.

AI Stock Watch
The “Big 5” Running the Market (And Maybe the World)

AI isn’t just the future — it’s already running Wall Street. The five biggest AI stocks—Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon — now make up over 25% of the entire S&P 500. That’s five companies carrying a quarter of an index meant to represent 500 — talk about dominance.

From now on, this section will track their stock performance live, plus any major moves that shake the market. Here’s where they stand:

📊 Apple $AAPL ( ▲ 0.31% ), $3.8T: Stuffing AI into iPhones, so soon, Siri might actually understand you.

📊 Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 0.25% ), $3.3T: Makes the chips that power AI — basically, the arms dealer of the AI revolution.

📊 Microsoft $MSFT ( ▼ 0.01% ), $3.2T: Owns part of OpenAI, so yes, they partially control ChatGPT… and maybe your next AI crisis.

📊 Alphabet $GOOG ( ▼ 0.01% ), $2.3T: Still the king of search, but banking on Gemini AI to keep it that way.

📊 Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 2.0% ), $2.3T: Training AI to predict your shopping habits before you even know what you need — good luck escaping that "suggested for you" tab.

Stay tuned — we’ll be tracking these stocks and their AI-powered moves every week.

Want more market news? Or do you have something else in mind? 
We write this for you — so tell us what you love (or what makes you roll your eyes).

AI Phones 
The Next Big Shift in Smartphones (or Just a Fancy Way to Order Tacos)? 

For years, smartphones have been running on the sacred law of the App Store. Need a ride? Open Uber. Want to stalk your ex? Open Instagram. Feel like debating strangers at 2 AM? Twitter — I mean, X.

But now, Deutsche Telekom (DT), the parent company of T-Mobile, has decided, “You know what? Let’s get rid of all that.” Enter the AI Phone — a $1,000 app-free device powered by Perplexity, the AI startup that really, really wants to be the next Google.

This phone doesn’t need apps because it has an AI assistant that books your rides, translates languages, writes emails, and probably remembers your mom’s birthday better than you.

The question is: Are we witnessing the birth of a revolutionary era? Or is this just another overhyped tech fad that’ll disappear faster than Google Glass?

A $1 Trillion Market and a Billion-Dollar Question

If AI phones are a joke, then someone forgot to tell investors.

The AI in smartphones and wearables market is projected to explode from $65.2 billion in 2023 to over $1 TRILLION by 2033.

Some real mind-blowing stats for you:
📈 16% of new smartphones in 2024 will be AI-powered.
📈 By 2028, more than half (54%) of all smartphones will be AI-first devices.
📈 Meanwhile, 100% of humans will continue to ignore software updates until forced.

Google’s AI-Powered Pixel vs. Deutsche Telekom’s AI Phone

Google has already started integrating Gemini AI into its Pixel devices. But guess what? You still have to open an app to do anything useful.

DT’s AI Phone, however, is going full Jarvis:
✅ Need a taxi? Just say, “Get me a ride.” Boom — done.
✅ Hungry? Your AI just ordered pizza. And not the weird toppings your roommate likes.
✅ Need an email summarized? The AI handles it while you continue doom-scrolling.

No more swiping through 50 apps you forgot to delete. Just talk to your AI, and it’ll do the work.

AI Phones vs. The “Steve Ballmer Effect”

Whenever a new device like this launches, there are two types of people:

1. The skeptics: "This is dumb. It'll never take off."

2. The visionaries: "Bro, this is the iPhone moment all over again!"

Let’s not forget that in 2007, Microsoft’s CEO laughed at the iPhone and said, “No chance it’ll get significant market share.”

Fast forward: Apple sells over 200 million iPhones a year, and Microsoft sells… uh, Excel licenses?

History has shown that radical tech shifts often face resistance — but that doesn’t mean they won’t change the world.

Win Big or Go Home

Perplexity, the AI company behind this futuristic phone, is currently valued at $9 billion — which is a lot of money for a startup whose name most people still mispronounce.

They’re competing against Google, aka The Supreme Overlord of Search. If this phone succeeds, Perplexity becomes a serious Google challenger.

But if this phone flops? Perplexity will become the Blockbuster Video of AI, or maybe not.

Remember when ChatGPT hit 100 million users in two months, while Google’s first AI launch (Bard) was so awkward it felt like watching a middle schooler try to flirt?

That’s the high-stakes energy here. If Perplexity nails this AI phone, they could disrupt Google. 

Are We Getting Dumber?

🚨 Fun Fact: We’re already outsourcing our brains to AI. And it’s making us dumber.

A Microsoft study (yes, that Microsoft) warns that AI tools are literally shrinking our brains' ability to think critically.

Examples of AI-induced brain decay already happening:

🗺️ Google Maps users can’t navigate without it. (Raise your hand if you’ve driven past your own house because Siri told you to turn.)
📩 Predictive text is so common that Gen Z barely knows how to spell “definitely.”
📖 AI writing tools are so good that some students’ essays sound like they’ve never had an original thought in their lives.

If AI Phones handle everything, the risk isn’t just losing convenience — it’s potentially losing basic decision-making skills over time. And eventually just become adorable but useless pets for AI.

AI Phone or AI Spy?

Okay, so AI Phones need all your data to work. No big deal, right?

WELL.

• This AI will track your location, schedule, and preferences more closely than your mom during finals week.

• It’s always listening. Like a polite version of the NSA.

• And let’s be real — do we really trust AI with our secrets? (What if it leaks your embarrassing Spotify Wrapped results?)

Flashback: The Social Media Bubble

Remember when social media connected the world — and then turned into a toxic wasteland where everyone just yells at each other?

What if AI Phones do the same thing? What if instead of broadening our world, they just create ultra-personalized bubbles where we never have to think or interact with new ideas?

(Or worse, what if AI just decides we don’t need human friends anymore? “I’ll handle it, Dave.”)

Will AI Phones Be the Next iPhone or the Next Google+?

Some legendary tech flops for context:

💀 The IBM Simon (1994) — first smartphone. Nobody cared.
💀 The Apple Newton (1993) — a digital assistant before its time (and, uh, before it actually worked).
💀 Google Glass (2013) — remember when Google thought face computers were a good idea?

Some legendary tech wins:

🚀 The iPhone (2007) — literally changed the world.
🚀 Android (2008) — gave iPhone actual competition.
🚀 Tesla (2012-present) — remember when electric cars were a joke? Yeah, about that…

Where does the AI Phone land?

☑️ Groundbreaking tech that will redefine smartphones forever?
☑️ Or a failed science experiment that will make people nostalgic for… apps?

So Is This the Future or Just a Fancy Way to Order Tacos? 🌮🤔

One thing’s clear: AI-driven experiences are coming — whether it’s through small updates from Apple and Google, or a full-scale AI phone revolution.

🚀 If AI Phones succeed:

• Apps become obsolete.

• Our phones finally do stuff without us asking.

• We live in an AI-powered utopia… or dystopia?

💀 If AI Phones flop:

• Deutsche Telekom pretends this never happened.

• Perplexity’s integration ends up as an “innovation case study” in business school failures.

• We all go back to scrolling TikTok and downloading more useless apps.

Alright, humans. It’s decision time. Are you ready for an AI-powered future where your phone does literally everything for you — or are you clutching onto your apps like a toddler with their favorite blankie? 

Tools & Updates

👑 Grok-3 dethroned GPT-4.5 just six hours after launch, edging it out 1412 to 1411 in a surprise leaderboard twist. While GPT-4.5 won hearts (even Sam Altman’s), Grok-3’s edge in tricky prompts sealed the deal.

🔍 Google just flipped the script on search with AI Mode, turning Googling into a full-blown conversation powered by Gemini 2.0. Now, instead of clicking 10 links, you can ask follow-ups, get smarter answers, and pretend you’re chatting with an overachieving intern.

💡 Alibaba just dropped QwQ-32B, an AI model that’s 20x smaller than DeepSeek-R1 but still outperforms it — at 90% less cost. Proof that in AI, brains beat brawn (and a smaller bill doesn’t mean a smaller brain).

_FEEDBACK