Google AI shopping 🛒, inside a16z 💰, anti-AI hype 🤖

Google has unveiled a new set of tools for retailers to help them roll out AI agents. The agents can help shoppers find their desired items ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR 2026-01-12 The 5-Step Playbook for Unlocking the Value of AI (Sponsor) AI is all the rage, but are you really using it to your advantage? This practical guide from You.com guides you through the process of identifying and prioritizing opportunities where AI can best serve your org. Explore where AI can drive the most impact in your organization, both internally and externally.  Learn more with this AI Use Case Discovery Guide. 📱 Big Tech & Startups Google Bets on AI-Based Shopping With New AI Agents for Retailers (6 minute read) Google has unveiled a new set of tools for retailers to help them roll out AI agents. The new retail AI agents can help shoppers find their desired items and provide customer support. They are designed to address the challenges retailers face in building their own AI agents. Major retailers, including Lowe's and Kroger, are already using Google's tools. Netflix Begins Its Grand Podcast Experiment (12 minute read) Sportscaster Bill Simmons will go live on Netflix on Sunday night, marking the unofficial beginning of Netflix's move into podcasting. Netflix plans to offer dozens of podcasts over the next few months. It is a big moment for the podcasting industry, which is praying that Netflix will turn into a major new buyer. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology Big Win for SpaceX as FCC Clears It to Upgrade Starlink With Gigabit Speeds (10 minute read) SpaceX's plan to upgrade Starlink with gigabit internet speeds has received partial approval from the US FCC. The company can now launch 7,500 more satellites, operate its constellation at lower orbits, and use a larger swath of radio frequencies. SpaceX has received a time-limited waiver to operate the Starlink network at higher power levels to improve speeds. The waiver is confined to Starlink operations in the US. When Google Locked the Door, Three MIT Students Picked the Lock (11 minute read) DeepMind shipped AlphaFold 3 last spring, but its code was locked, weights were restricted, and commercial applications were forbidden. By December, three MIT PhD students had reverse-engineered the architecture and released their own version. Boltz is available on GitHub under Apache 2.0 for anyone to download. The Boltz team now has $28 million in funding and a Pfizer partnership, showing how the industry is willing to reject Google's closed approach and instead build around it. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science Add API key management to your SaaS in minutes (Sponsor) API keys remain the most common way developers integrate with your product programmatically. We cover when to offer API access, security best practices for key generation and storage, and how Clerk's new API Keys feature handles the heavy lifting — plus a walkthrough showing key creation, rotation, and revocation in action. Agent-native Architectures (52 minute read) Claude Code demonstrated that large language models with access to bash and file tools can accomplish complex multi-step tasks autonomously by operating in a loop until an objective is achieved. Good coding agents are really good general-purpose agents. The Claude Code software development kit makes this accessible. It allows developers to build applications where features are achieved by agents with tools. This opens up a new field of software that works the way Claude Code works, but in categories far beyond coding. Don't fall into the anti-AI hype (8 minute read) Whatever you may feel about AI, skipping it will not help you or your career. Test these new tools with weeks of work, and find a way to multiply yourself. If it doesn't work out, try again every few months. AI allows you to build more and better. While you might not be writing the code yourself, the fun of creating is still there, untouched. 🎁 Miscellaneous The "AI-Generated Hit Movie" Horror Story (9 minute read) Roku's CEO predicts that the first 100% AI-generated hit movie will be released in the next three years. AI-generated video is already flooding social media, so it is not unreasonable to believe that fully AI-generated movies will be possible in three years. The bigger question is whether there will be an audience for that content. It is likely that AI-generated content will raise the demand for human-generated content. There may be a market for hybrid content, but a purely AI-generated movie topping the box office by 2029 is unlikely. a16z: The Power Brokers (98 minute read) a16z has just announced $15 billion in fresh funds. The firm is the best-marketed firm in venture capital. The story that it tells about itself is consistent with its actions. a16z is doing something different: it wants to build the future and eat the world. ⚡ Quick Links Nvidia's New Rubin Architecture Thrives on Networking (4 minute read) The six new chips in Nvidia's Vera Rubin-based computers work together in concert to achieve performance advantages. Cloudspecs: Cloud Hardware Evolution Through the Looking Glass (5 minute read) While network bandwidth per dollar improved by one order of magnitude, CPU and DRAM gains have been much more modest. Elon Musk Says X to Make Algorithm Open Source in Seven Days (3 minute read) X will update its release every 4 weeks with comprehensive developer notes to help the public understand what has changed. The Signal Chat Where Silicon Valley Is Plotting Against California's Billionaire Tax (6 minute read) Silicon Valley titans are airing their grievances in an active Signal chat called 'Save California', sounding off against the tax, suggesting alternatives, and in some cases sharing efforts to weaken their ties to the state. Insiders Say DeepSeek V4 Will Beat Claude and ChatGPT at Coding, Launch Within Weeks (4 minute read) DeepSeek is reportedly planning to release its V4 model around mid-February. How Markdown took over the world (26 minute read) Markdown is used in nearly every bit of the high-tech world, from the most cutting-edge AI systems to grocery lists in Apple Notes. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/7c97ce4b/ Track your referrals here. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us. Want to work at TLDR? 💼 Apply here, create your own role or send a friend's resume to jobs@tldr.tech and get $1k if we hire them! TLDR is one of Inc.'s Best Bootstrapped businesses of 2025. If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! Thanks for reading, Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders Manage your subscriptions to our other newsletters on tech, startups, and programming. Or if TLDR isn't for you, please unsubscribe.