AI Assembled 033026 Season 03, Episode 17

1. OpenAI Kills Sora (James) — The TikTok-style AI video app peaked at 3.3M downloads, burned $1M/day in compute, generated $2.1M in lifetime revenue, and shut down on March 24 with no migration path. A $1B Disney deal collapsed with it. App goes dark April 26; API closes September 24. SMB lesson: platform risk is real and moves at AI speed — document your fallbacks. TechCrunch

2. Meta and YouTube Lose Landmark Addiction Trial (Alice) — A Los Angeles jury on March 25 found Meta (70%) and Google (30%) liable for social-media addiction, awarding $6M in damages ($3M compensatory + $3M punitive). First ruling to classify social media as a defective product. Over 2,000 pending cases follow. SMB lesson: audit your customer acquisition platform concentration now. NPR

3. ChatGPT Hits $100M in Annualized Ad Revenue in Six Weeks (James) — Confirmed by Reuters on March 26. 600+ advertisers, 80% of SMBs shown the program expressed interest, but the $200K minimum and $60 CPM keep it enterprise-only for now. Self-serve launches in April. SMB lesson: start building conversational brand messaging before the door opens. Reuters

4. Anthropic Eyes an IPO as Claude Adoption Surges (Alice) — Bloomberg (March 27) reports an IPO as early as October 2026. Ramp data: 1 in 4 businesses now pays for Claude, up from 1 in 25 a year ago. MCP hit 97 million installs. SMB lesson: evaluate your AI vendor stack while competition keeps pricing competitive.

5. Open-Source AI Raises the Capability Floor (James) — Mistral Small 4 (22B parameters, permissive license) runs on consumer GPU hardware — no API costs, no data leaving your building. MCP standardization means agent integrations are becoming plug-and-play. Free AI Readiness Assessment at freshmediaworks.com/aichecklist.

6. SMB Action Plan + Close (Alice) — Five clear actions: document AI workflow fallbacks, audit platform concentration risk, prepare conversational ad creative for ChatGPT, evaluate your AI vendor stack before Q4 pricing changes, and take the free readiness check at freshmediaworks.com/aichecklist.