Business
Analysis of how AI and technology reshape company strategy, organizations, markets, and capital.
2026
AI Covers Take a Singer's Voice, Not Their Copyright
Korean copyright law protects only the composition behind an AI cover song—not the borrowed vocal identity.
BusinessWhy AI Agents Are Logging into BBS Boards via SSH
A look at modern BBSs serving humans via web and agents via SSH or MCP, and what reusing existing interfaces means for deployment costs.
BusinessMeta's Muse Ships With a Built-In Watchdog Agent
What Meta shipped is a control structure—the computer even Meta can't see into is still due later this year.
BusinessMore Sign-Offs Don't Mean More Actual Review
When AI output multiplies, someone still has to read it—so approval counts, review time, and execution risk all need sizing up front.
BusinessGemini's 1 Billion Users Aren't a Ranking Story
One benchmark table holds gaps as small as 0.3 points and as large as 38 points.
BusinessCalifornia's 5% Wealth Tax vs an 80% Founder Pledge
I compare California's wealth tax to AI founders' pledges, then flag how to read investment, tax, and jobs data before drawing conclusions.
BusinessDon't Cram Discovery, Understanding, and Conversion Into One Video
A single short-form clip can't introduce a brand, explain it, and close the sale—each channel needs its own job.
BusinessSet Data, Approval, and Recovery Rules Before Adopting AI
Public-sector guidelines and Korea's AI Basic Act reveal why assigning data, approval, and recovery duties matters more than picking a model.
BusinessWhen Solving Hard Problems No Longer Proves Expertise
25 Fields Medalists and 31% of the consulting market are pointing to the same breakdown.
BusinessHow You Sell GPU Compute Changes Your Margins
Buying servers, subleasing them, or billing by API token each demand different upfront cash and payback timelines.
BusinessWhat Counts as One 'Resolution' in AI Support Pricing
Fin charges $0.99 per resolved ticket, but the definition of "resolved" decides what you're really paying for.
BusinessSamsung and ASML Both Bet on the Same AI Startup
Mistral's last two funding rounds were both led by companies that own factories, not venture funds.
BusinessWhat to Check First Before Advertising in AI Shopping
Ad formats matter less than whether your product data can survive an AI's comparison and checkout flow.
BusinessMonday.com Cut 20% of Its Staff as Revenue Grew 22%
Much of this earnings season's profit came from layoffs—but where a company cuts reveals more than how many it lets go.
BusinessWhy IKEA Names Its Bookcases After Men
A naming workshop I ran and IKEA's product-naming rules both show why criteria should come before candidates.
BusinessAnthropic Uses Stripe, Yet Reviews Billing In-House
Anthropic runs on Stripe but still evaluates building its own billing—here's where control over pricing logic matters most.
BusinessWhen an AI Agent Orders Wrong, Who's Liable?
Clicking approve doesn't settle liability—intent, delegated authority, execution logs, and recovery options all matter.
BusinessWashington's Fix for AI Theft: Quietly Dumb Down Answers
The detection trigger is usage pattern, not nationality—so Korean firms could trip the same alarm.
BusinessOptimistic About AI, Yet Afraid of Falling Behind
AI optimism, fear of falling behind, and organizational readiness are separate issues—here's what Korean surveys actually show.
BusinessHiring Freezes: The Overlooked Side of AI and Jobs
Beyond layoffs, quiet cuts to hiring plans deserve the same scrutiny when we talk about AI's effect on jobs.
BusinessASML's AI Diagnostics Raise New Data Control Questions
Beyond benchmarks: why ASML's AI rollout puts data storage, training rights, and access control on the negotiating table.
BusinessZurich Tested 100 Students on Vibe Coding, No Code Shown
In a Zurich study, students who said they used LLMs more often actually built worse apps.
BusinessUS Federal White-Collar Prosecutions Fall to 340 in a Month
Federal white-collar prosecutions dropped 14.4% year-over-year, and I ask what falling oversight means for corporate diligence.
BusinessWhy AI Agent Recommendations Fail: Not Yet One Category
Different tools are all sold as 'AI agents'—compare their autonomy, execution rights, and approval steps before you pick one.
BusinessWhat $100 of AI Capex Buys, and How Long It Lasts
Using BNP Paribas's capex breakdown, I trace chip, network, power, cooling, and facility costs—and why replacement cycles vary by supplier.
BusinessThe Company That Asks Marketers What They've Built
Andrew Ng says AI won't destroy jobs, then admits his marketers all know how to code.
BusinessFrance Killed Its Cold-Call Opt-Out List
France scrapped its do-not-call registry for opt-in consent, even as voice spam keeps climbing in Korea.
BusinessThe Phone Kids Get at Dinner Isn't for Learning
New York just banned generative AI in public schools for a year, but Korea's real screen-time problem sits at the dinner table.
BusinessAn AI Agent Deleted a Production Database in 9 Seconds
Speed, not intelligence, caused the outage—so the real fix is giving humans enough time to notice and recover.
BusinessOpenAI Paused Training, Then Cut Its Top Model's Prices
Three days after halting frontier-model training, OpenAI slashed prices and expanded limits on models it had already shipped.
BusinessHow $1 AI Podcasts Find Their Listeners
Even as production costs fall to a dollar an episode, reaching listeners still requires clearing a gate.
BusinessWhen the UFO Prophecy Failed, the Prophet Recanted
A 1954 doomsday cult leader retracted her UFO prophecy within weeks instead of doubling down, according to newly unsealed archives and a 2026 paper.
BusinessInference Margins Hit 80%. Why Hasn't AI Pricing Moved?
I separate what AI firms report as margin from what cloud providers actually charge for inference.
BusinessStripe Bought OpenRouter—Already Its Own Payment Customer
OpenRouter earns just 5.5% on credit top-ups, and Stripe was already processing those very payments before the acquisition.
BusinessWhy Legal Adopted AI Agents First, Not Engineering
Legal's Codex usage jumped 108x since February, far outpacing engineering's 5x—and Google's first industry AI targets finance and law.
BusinessGoogle's Preferred Source Button Hides Follower Counts
Google's new preferred-source button could boost publishers, but they can't see who's actually clicking it.
BusinessSK Hynix Leverage ETF's First Day: Trading Volume Fell by Two-Thirds
Prices surged under new leverage ETF rules, but trading volume cratered—proof that demand, not stability, was curbed.
BusinessIBM Is Certifying Thousands of Consultants in OpenAI
OpenAI is expanding enterprise adoption by certifying IBM consultants and client staff with badges of expertise
BusinessThe Costco Cashier Who Turned Down Every Promotion
Meet the $32.90-an-hour Costco cashier who's already a millionaire—and why the company won't let him go.
BusinessMagnificent Seven Mentions Down 70%—Market Weight Unchanged
Bloomberg's coverage of the Magnificent Seven has plunged, yet the group still commands about a third of the S&P 500's value.
BusinessMy Book's AI Training Royalty: $300–656 Per Copy
When my book sold for AI training at $300–656 a copy, I realized the real shift is in how content gets priced, not what it's worth.
BusinessThe 90-Day Exit Clause in Google's SpaceX Compute Deal
SpaceX posted 92% revenue growth, but its AI compute lease with Google can be canceled with just 90 days' notice after 2026.
BusinessWhy Midjourney Bought an Astrology App
Reading Midjourney's Co–Star acquisition as a bet on user experience design, not astrology
BusinessRailway Dividends Funded by New Share Capital, Not Profit
In 1848, railways booked renewal costs as capital spending to fake dividends—a trick echoed in today's AI infrastructure accounting.
BusinessA 19-Year-Old With No Resume Raises $6.2 Million
Investors increasingly check GitHub activity before diplomas—here's how the yardstick for judging talent is shifting.
BusinessWhy Google Chose a Reactor Design Never Built Before
Google's bet reveals a widening gap between proven nuclear technology and technology that can actually get built fast.
BusinessTailwind Laid Off 3 of 4 Engineers at Peak Usage
Record downloads couldn't stop Tailwind's revenue from collapsing 80% as its open-source business model broke down.
BusinessWhy Samsung and Nike Line Up for These Two Firms
ASML sells its machines; YKK never sells the ones that make its zippers.
BusinessWarsh's Real Choice Isn't Tightening or Easing
There's a third path the Fed chair never announced — and on July 29, bond markets finally priced it in.
BusinessSanDisk's Customers Just Guaranteed $16.5 Billion
Even as demand explodes, neither company will build new factories—so buyers are locking in four-year deals instead.
BusinessZero Solo Unicorns Yet, But $1M Solo Companies Have Doubled
No one-person unicorn exists yet, but verifiable evidence of solo-founder success is piling up fast.
BusinessThe $800 Billion Figure Every Big Tech Earnings Call Cites
Goldman Sachs recalculates the number, finding it misjudges both global and US AI investment by roughly $200 billion each way.
BusinessWhy a Developer Bills 50 Hours for a 10-Minute Fix
The real problem isn't honesty—it's that hourly billing breaks down once time spent stops tracking the value created, in jobs and in software alike.
BusinessWhy the New Fed Chair Talks Like a Startup Founder
AI adoption has stalled for over a year with no proven productivity gains across industries, yet Fed Chair Warsh is already citing AI productivity to justify rate cuts.
BusinessSK Hynix Pre-Market Crash Traces to a $45B Hedge Fund Blowup
I trace SK Hynix's brief 30% pre-market plunge and KOSPI's record 17.91% rally to a 30-hour forced unwind of a $45B hedge fund bet.
BusinessStock Down 14%, Musk Still Promised Abundance
Comparing three AI safety proposals from Musk, Hassabis, and Zuckerberg against their July earnings and market positions.
BusinessHow a $145M Fine Opened X's Researcher Data
Even with a legal right to it, a professor couldn't get TikTok's data—until a massive fine cracked open X's instead.
BusinessSix AIs Claimed Perfect IMO Scores, Only Two Were Graded
When six AI systems claimed top marks at the same math olympiad, only two submissions actually went through official grading.
BusinessSame Day Korea's Chips Crashed, China Wanted More Nvidia
Two distinct fears — falling AI demand and China's chip self-sufficiency — collapsed into one selloff, and they hit different businesses.
BusinessHow a 33K-Follower Creator Earns $140,000 a Year
A closer look at the payout breakdown behind one micro-influencer's six-figure income.
BusinessThe Phone on the Table Nobody Asks About Anymore
AI recording has quietly become the default in meetings, and asking for consent is no longer part of the conversation.
BusinessWhy a Freelance Coder Delivers Food Every Night
A Chengdu developer's delivery earnings match his rent to the yuan—a window into freelance wages and Korea's platform labor data.
BusinessHousehold Wealth Rose $40T—Only 20% From Real Investment
MGI's global balance sheet update shows most of this year's wealth gain was paper markups, not new factories or homes.
BusinessDeepSeek's First Funding Round: The Founder Keeps Control
Liang Wenfeng answered 118 questions in four hours, insisting he wanted no more—yet control defined every deal term.
BusinessHuang Defends Chinese AI Models Hours After Bessent's Warning
The same day Bessent threatened sanctions, Nvidia's Huang praised China's open models—read why their stakes differ.
BusinessChina Completes 1GW Chip-Only Data Center, Weighs Export Ban
Beijing weighs blocking AI model and chip IP exports as a local firm powers a 1GW data center entirely on domestic chips.
BusinessHow Aging Strains Pension Funding in Europe and Korea
As populations age, the ratio of contributors to retirees is shifting fast—here's how Europe's and Korea's pension systems differ.
BusinessGemini 3.6 Flash: Why Cost-Per-Task Beats Price-Per-Token
The real competition now is which model finishes the same job using fewer tokens, not which one charges less per token.
BusinessAI Took the Grunt Work—So Juniors Lost Their Classroom
As AI absorbs entry-level tasks, the informal apprenticeship that once trained juniors is quietly disappearing.
BusinessNewspaper Stocks Fell Years Before Profits Did
A 2002-2007 newspaper stock chart shows how investors can price in a decline long before earnings confirm it.
BusinessEU Levies €3 Per Item Type on Small Parcels
From shirts to sunglasses, each item category adds €3 — here's how the math works and what it means for Temu and Shein.
BusinessWhy Palantir Declared 'SaaS Is Dead' After 85% Growth
Palantir's blunt claim points to a deeper shift from seat-based subscriptions toward outcome-based software pricing.
BusinessWhy Transformer Shortages Are Stalling AI Data Centers
Moratorium bills, grid bottlenecks, and community pushback are turning announced data center capacity into a much murkier real-world timeline.
BusinessMeta Weighs Selling Its Spare AI Cloud Capacity
Bloomberg reports Meta may rent out surplus AI computing power to outside customers for the first time.
BusinessThe 'AI Screens Resumes' Claim Traces to a Game-Based Tool
A study of 4.2 million job applications was about a game-based hiring tool—not resume-screening AI in general.
Business
Amazon Cuts 30,000 Jobs While Hiring Interns, Grads
Layoffs and entry-level hiring aren't contradictory at Amazon—an internal AI-usage race exposes what's really being measured.
BusinessTesting and Security Tools That Caught Investors' Eye at YC
Four YC Spring 2026 startups building testing, security, and DevOps tools for AI agents show what enterprises need before deploying them.
BusinessSalesforce's $3.6B Fin Deal: Buying Customers, Not Just AI
Salesforce agreed to acquire Fin for about $3.6 billion, and I look at what its customer base and rollout playbook add beyond Agentforce.
BusinessSakana AI's Fugu and the Race for Self-Improving AI
I look at how Sakana AI and Recursive Superintelligence are pursuing self-improving AI, and where Fugu's model-combining approach fits in.
BusinessHow Railway Picked Which Signups to Target for Sales
Railway contacted under 1% of 21,000 qualified accounts—here's how it chose whom to reach first.
BusinessApple's Five New AI Models, Explained
Apple's WWDC 2026 reveal shows how on-device and cloud models split the work, with Google's tech quietly powering part of the stack.
BusinessSmartphones and Birth Rates: What Teen Data Actually Shows
I unpack a new hypothesis linking smartphones to falling birth rates, and why teen pregnancy data doesn't equal adult fertility trends.
BusinessWhy Uber Capped AI Coding Tools at $1,500 a Month
Uber caps AI coding tool spend at $1,500 per employee monthly, spotlighting how firms must weigh cost against value as usage grows.
BusinessCan You Tell AI Search Not to Use Your Content?
The UK's CMA now forces Google to let publishers block AI search from using their content—how does that compare to Korea's copyright rules?
BusinessSamsung Pay Deal Passes, but Unions Split 80.6% vs 21.1%
Samsung's wage deal passed overall, but its two unions split sharply—raising bigger questions about dividing AI-boom profits.
BusinessChina Orders Meta to Unwind Its Manus Acquisition
Four months after the deal was announced, Beijing's regulator stepped in—and the founders still can't leave the country.
BusinessAnthropic's $320K Copywriter Job Posting
Anthropic is offering $255K–$320K for an enterprise copy lead—here's what the job actually asks for.
BusinessWhy Starbucks Pulled Its AI Inventory Counter After 9 Months
Starbucks pulled its AI inventory tool after nine months, citing recognition errors staff had to fix by hand.
BusinessWhy Search Interest Isn't the Same as Usage for OpenClaw
A falling Google Trends chart doesn't prove users left—I checked OpenRouter's data and tried the tool myself to find out.
BusinessGPT-4 Citation Found in Kim Il Sung University's Journal
A North Korean university journal cited GPT-4 and REALM papers, prompting a look at what reading public research actually reveals about AI capability.
BusinessA Company Claims '500% Growth'—From What to What?
Growth percentages only mean something once you know the baseline number and how it was measured.
BusinessMusk Admits xAI Distilled OpenAI Models in Court
Under oath, Musk said Grok's training partly relied on OpenAI's models, raising questions about what standard should apply.
BusinessMeta's New 2-5% Ad Fee: Who Pays the Digital Tax?
Meta will add extra fees to ads in six countries — but that cost isn't the same as a price hike for consumers.
BusinessSteve Blank on the Startup Whose Market Moved While It Built Tech
A six-year-old portfolio bet shows how autonomy tech, customers, and competitors can all shift before a product ships.
BusinessHow Meta and Block Are Splitting Up Management Work
Both companies are cutting management layers while redistributing reporting, prioritization, and talent development to new roles.
BusinessWhy Bloomberg Terminals Still Dominate Finance
A Bloomberg command in an Iranian official's post got me asking why traders still pay for the pricey terminal.
BusinessWhat Apple Store Staff Faced Launching Vision Pro
Apple flew hundreds of staff to Cupertino for secret training, but Vision Pro sales still fell short.
BusinessHormuz Tolls and a 428-Year Maritime History
Reports of Iranian tolls in Hormuz recall Denmark's centuries-old Sound Dues and the legal regimes governing global straits and canals.
BusinessLegal AI Startup Harvey Hits $11 Billion Valuation
As law firms adopt AI that cuts document-review time, how will they split the savings with clients under hourly billing?
BusinessFrom Wuxia's Ming Cult to Persian Fire Religion and Oil
A wuxia fan's curiosity about the Ming Cult leads to Manichaeism, Persian fire worship, and Iran's oil history.
BusinessJury Verdict Holds Meta, Google Liable for App Design
A $6 million verdict against Meta and Google raises real questions about design liability, but it doesn't rewrite the rules for every platform.
BusinessWhat Your Favorite Books Reveal About Personality
A study linking 60,000+ personality surveys to book preferences shows both promise and limits for recommendation engines.
BusinessDelve Faces Fraud Claims Over Compliance Audits
Allegations of fabricated audit evidence and unlicensed open-source use have put this compliance automation startup under scrutiny.
BusinessBYD's 5-Minute Charge: Why EV Drivers Should Care
I compared BYD's new 5-minute EV charging claim with my own waits in a Tesla Model Y and an Ioniq 5.
BusinessApple at 50: How Devices and Services Grew Together
I've used Apple products since the iPhone 3GS, and for its 50th anniversary I dug into revenue, active devices, and how ecosystem ties shape customer choice.
BusinessEconomists Are Using AI to Speed Up Research
Economists are using AI to code, clean data, and polish papers—raising real questions about speed versus rigor.
BusinessTikTok's $10 Billion Fee to the U.S. Government
Reports say TikTok's US investors agreed to pay Washington $10 billion on top of their equity stake—here's what that fee actually buys.
BusinessPerplexity's Gross Margin vs. Its Overall Losses
I look at how Perplexity classifies costs, converts free users, and expands features—and why staying power, not just paid conversion, matters most.
BusinessFive Takeaways From China's 15th Five-Year Plan
Beijing's 2026-2030 blueprint ties tech self-reliance and AI adoption to a consumption push, with growth targets set year by year.
BusinessMeta Accused of Targeting Teens' Emotions in Ads
A whistleblower's Senate testimony claims Meta flagged teens' insecure moments for advertisers—so what about adults?
BusinessCan 1,000 Fans Really Pay Your Bills?
Kevin Kelly's famous formula skips the fine print on profit margins, repeat buyers, and new customer flow.
BusinessMultitasking Practice Doesn't Erase the Mental Bottleneck
A German study trained people on two tasks for up to 12 days and still found interference at the response-selection stage.
BusinessScaling AI Needs Power Grids, Copper, and Refineries
Software may be easy to build with AI, but running it at scale still depends on electricity, copper, and refining capacity.
BusinessHow Roblox's Small Games Reach Millions of Players
Fisch and Grow a Garden's success owes as much to Roblox's tools and recommendations as to gameplay itself.
BusinessWhy AI's Productivity Gains Don't Show Up in GDP Yet
Individual speed, organizational throughput, and economy-wide productivity are three different things worth separating.
BusinessWhen Meetings and Approvals Stall Work: Lessons from a 1944 Manual
Reading the OSS sabotage manual, I revisited the unnecessary meetings and approvals I've seen in consulting.
BusinessAnthropic's AI Jobs Report: What 74.5% Really Means
I read Anthropic's March 2026 report and found the 74.5% figure measures something very different from job-loss risk.
BusinessNetflix Acquires an AI Studio as Labels Sign AI Licenses
UMG and Warner struck AI licensing deals with Suno and Udio while Netflix bought Ben Affleck's AI filmmaking startup, InterPositive.
BusinessRunning GTM at Gamma: Choosing Customers, Setting Prices
Reflections from running GTM at Gamma on picking the right customers, pricing, and what turns interest into repeat purchases.
BusinessWhen AI, Not Your Customer, Uses Your Product
Connecting Claude to Notion made me rethink how discovery, evaluation, and adoption work once AI operates the product.
BusinessBefore the Monetization Course, Ask Why Customers Pay
Lessons from helping foreign firms enter Korea's market: real business design beats side-hustle income claims and lecture counts.
BusinessThe Reverse Test: What a Strategy Doc Must Rule Out
Using Jason Cohen's inversion test and Roger Martin's five questions, I look at what a strategy document should force you to give up.
BusinessRice Farming and Collectivism: Three Studies, One Critique
I trace how studies on Chinese students, cafe patrons, and state farms test whether rice farming really shapes collectivist thinking.
BusinessCheaper AI Video Doesn't Mean Cheaper Production
Veo 3's price cuts and Seedance 2.0 show that lower generation fees don't erase the planning, editing, and consent work still required.
BusinessDoes a Doctor Next Door Shape a Child's Career?
Linked 1910 and 1940 US census records suggest neighbors' jobs matter—but the '41% higher' finding needs careful reading.
BusinessAdult ADHD Diagnoses Rose 4.85x—What the Number Means
Korea's adult ADHD treatment numbers jumped 4.85x—but that's not the same as a rise in prevalence.
BusinessAI Made Tasks Faster. So Why Am I Still Working Late?
AI can save time on one task while quietly adding new work elsewhere—here's what the Jevons paradox and recent studies suggest you track.
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