Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

Ben and Andrew interrupt Stratechery’s spring vacation with a mailbag. First, they discuss the end of Sora, the difference between Sora and Instagram, and where the OpenAI/Microsoft parallels break down. Then: A great take on advertising, ChatGPT engagement farming, Formula 1’s new era, the NFL’s world takeover, and how NBC solved tape delay at the Olympics. At the end: A question about Vision Pro and wives, whether elementary schoolers should have smart phones, Elon’s continued adventures with xAI, a Netflix dating show, LLM-aided dogfooding etymology, and Ben’s (admittedly boring) Taipei routine.

Ben and Andrew begin with the news that OpenAI is shifting away from “side quests” and allocating resources to the enterprise space, including Dropbox history to explain OpenAI’s present, lessons in the enterprise space generally (and what you learn in business school), and OpenAI taking cues from 1980s Microsoft. From there: Talking through Ben’s article on Monday, including the implications of agents and questions about integration as durable differentiation for Anthropic and OpenAI. At the end: Nvidia’s new messaging on inference chips and Groq integration, and a word about winters (and whiners) in Wisconsin.

Ben and Andrew begin with the MacBook Neo, including Ben’s memory needs, Apple’s clever move to repurpose old iPhone chips, and the market for a $599 laptop. From there: A question about VisionOS, Andrew’s notes after six weeks of Vision Pro joy, and an extended discussion of Claude’s differentiation, harnessing, Microsoft’s AI strategy, and the future of integration and AI. At the end: A question on the end of coding language, what went wrong at the Washington Post, and being right points on AI group chats.

Ben and Andrew react to a week of Anthropic discussion, including Dario Amodei’s leaked memo to employees, why a compromise is still possible, and answering a variety of questions in response to Ben’s article this week. At the end: A terrible AI law for young parents, surveying the implications for Netflix after Paramount wins the Warner Brothers bidding, a dispatch from dating app hell, a question about feeds on chatbots, should Google be the model for ChatGPT ads?, and thoughts on the business of F1 and the new season.

Ben and Andrew discuss the global memory shortage and answer a listener’s question: how did this happen? Topics include: What memory chips have in common with logic chips, why Intel left the memory market in the 1980s, how the international shipping market explains today’s shortage, how major players will address the problem going forward, possibly with some help from the Chinese. From there: A look at the “thin” future of AI computing as memory and performance takes precedent, AI computing that will still be done on device, and Apple’s AI strategy. At the end: Responses to Shopify concerns in the AI era, a question about the future of brands as AI finishes what digital advertising started, Shopify preferencing its own AI tools, and a looming test of Apple’s commitment to the Vision Pro.