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AI One-Upsmanship
00:23:16
Quantum computing stocks surged after the US announced $2B in grants with equity stakes. Spotify jumped 13% on 2030 guidance targeting $100B in revenue. Anthropic expects $10.9B in Q2 revenue and its first-ever operating profit, while Trump pulled back an AI executive order after calls with Musk and Zuckerberg.
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Study and play come together on a Windows 11 PC and for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more@windows.com studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30th terms at aka mscollegepc. Welcome to the Tech Boot Ride home for Friday, May 22, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, quantum computing stocks surged. Spotify surged. Maybe SaaS isn't dead quite yet. Anthropic expects its first ever operating profit, while OpenAI insists it's still ahead in the revenue run rate race and of course, the weekend long Read Suggestions here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Today's episode is brought to you by Doppel Disguises are getting pretty good these days, and I'm not just talking about when you throw on a pair of glasses and a hoodie and hope you won't be recognized. We're talking about the kind of disguises that end up in your inbox, your phone, or on the web, blending in as your everyday internal emails, casual text messages, or a normal website. Doppel strengthens team reliance by giving employees the tools and defenses they need to protect themselves from increasingly sophisticated social engineering threats. Their digital risk protection takes it one step further by keeping an eye on every channel to connect patterns and shut them down fast. From deepfakes to bad links to impersonation attempts, Doppel helps you stay ahead of these threats with their AI native social engineering defense platform. Learn more at D o P E L.com that's-o P E L.com A few stories about Narrative Now Vibes Narrative swings Some continuing to surge Some Some may be flipping the narrative script. First up the surge Shares of quantum computing companies surged Thursday after the U.S. government announced grants with equity stakes in multiple quantum computer companies. Quoting CNBC, Quantum Computing shares popped on Thursday as the US government said it would award $2 billion in grants to nine firms operating in the space. The National Institute of Standards and Technology announced the signing of letters of intent and a release saying it would take a minority, non controlling stake in each company. IBM is the biggest beneficiary of the package, with the U.S. commerce Department agreeing to give the firm $1 billion. Shares of IBM gained 12% on Thursday. The company is a frontrunner in the movement to build supercomputers using quantum technology, which developers say will be able to solve complex problems existing computers cannot tackle. Chipmaker GlobalFoundries is receiving 375 million, while other grant recipients D Wave, Quantum, Rigetti Computing and Inflection will be awarded $100 million. Startup Dirac is set to receive 38 million DOL in a grant and Psiquantum will get $100 million under the agreement. Shares of D Wave added 33%, Rigetti soared 30%, Inflection skyrocketed about 31%. Other Quantum firms that were not part of the announcement also climbed on the news, with Arkit booming 25% while Ionic popped 12% and Quantum Computing added 19%. The deals still have to be formally completed. Funding will come from the 2022 Chips and Science Act. Shortly after the Wall Street Journal published its report on this, IBM confirmed that it would work with the US Government to develop America's first purpose built quantum foundry, supported by the proposed $1 billion award. The company said the initiative will accelerate American quantum innovation and enable advanced quantum wafer production for a broad range of companies. IBM said the incentive from the Commerce Department will support the research and development efforts of a new IBM company called Andiron, to which IBM will contribute a $1 billion investment to match the government grant. Now for an abrupt gear shift in terms of narrative. Spotify closed up 13% on Thursday after all those newly announced features I told you about yesterday, but also, and likely primarily because of Spotify's 2030 guidance forecasting a compound annual growth rate in the mid teens. Quoting CNBC once again, Spotify referred to plans to reach 1 billion subscribers and $100 billion in revenue, as its quote. North Star. We are still firing on all cylinders, co CEO Gustav Sonderstrom told CNBC's Julia Boorstin in the company's first investor day since 2022. We're seeing strong growth in free users and in subscribers. Shares have lost about a quarter of their value over the last year. This is the first investor day for the company in four years, and under the direction of its new co CEOs Sanderstrom and Alex Norstrom, founder and former CEO Daniel X stepped down at the start of this year after about two decades at the helm. Spotify is also trying to prove it can be more than a music streaming platform as it bets on verticals like audiobooks and podcasts. At the same time, the music industry is undergoing a major shift. Record labels are grappling with how to protect artists from copyright infringement as platforms that generate generate music through prompts rise in popularity and blur the lines between AI and human made music. Lawsuits have already emerged within the industry. In 2024, Warner Music, UMG and Sony sued AI music startup Suno and Udio, alleging the companies used copyrighted songs to train their AI models. Suno, which raised $250 million in November, settled with Warner Music last year and signed an agreement that let users create AI generated music featuring participating artists. Universal and Warner both settled with Udio. Spotify also announced subscriptions for certain creators on the platform and updates to its audiobook feature. The company also launched a program that lets certain mega fans buy two concert tickets before they go on sale to the public. Since 2022, Spotify said it has added more than 340 million new users to the platform and has grown its subscriber base by more than 110 million. And then this would be an interesting potential narrative shift if it's holding out across other companies. You know, that whole narrative over the last six months of a SaaS apocalypse of maybe AI coming for everyone in the software space? Well, what if that narrative dies because the SaaS incumbents can execute on agentic AI in a complementary way, complementary to what they do, or transform what they already do? Once more to CNBC, my friends Workday shares popped 5% on Friday after the finance and human resources software maker reported results that came in stronger than expected while bumping up its margin forecast for the full fiscal year. Workday's revenue grew 13% in the fiscal first quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. On Thursday, the company reported net income of 222 million, or $0.80 per share, up from 68 million, or $0.25 per share 1 year earlier. With respect to guidance, Workday called for a 30% adjusted operating margin and $2.46 billion in subscription revenue for the fiscal second quarter. Analysts polled by Street Account had anticipated a 30% margin and $2.45 billion in subscription revenue. Management lifted Workday's full year margin forecast. The company is now projecting a 30.5% adjusted operating margin, up from 30% as of February. The company is still looking for 12 to 13% growth. Workday stock has been having its worst year since it went public in 2012, as investors have fretted that generative artificial intelligence models could reduce growth prospects for major software companies. As of Thursday's close, Workday shares were down 43% for 2026, while the S&P 500 index has gained about 9% in the same period. Our core business is strong, our AI strategy is working and we're moving with the speed and focus required to lead, the new CEO of Workday was quoted as saying in a statement. Workday said the number of clients using agents it has built more than doubled from the previous quarter, with over 4,000 using at least one. Annualized revenue from Agentic AI Solutions is approaching $500 million, Workday's president of product and technology said in a conference call with analysts. The 150th feature in HR or finance is not going to move the needle for our business, the company said. But the next Agentic application will End quote. President Trump was supposed to sign a big executive order yesterday on AI, but according to reporting, delayed it, sources say, after last minute calls with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, David Sachs, among others. Sources say Sachs in particular told President Trump that federal reviews of AI models, which had been discussed before release, would slow down innovation and hurt the US in its AI race with China, quoting the journal. The tech leaders who spoke with Trump, who included SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, warned that the administration's new vetting system could inhibit development of a technology at the heart of the US Economy, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations. Trump decided not to sign the order after the White House had already sent out invitations to the leaders of top tech companies to attend a signing ceremony scheduled for Thursday afternoon, hours before the event was expected to begin. Even as some industry executives were traveling to Washington for the signing. Trump announced to reporters in the Oval Office that he had called it off because he, quote, didn't like the draft of the order. I really thought that could have been a blocker, trump said, noting the benefits of AI in the American economy. And I want to make sure that it's not end quote. Trump made the decision to postpone the signing following conversations with Sachs and other industry leaders, said one of the people familiar with the events. Later on Thursday afternoon, he had phone calls with executives including Musk and Zuckerberg, and then told his staff that the order could not move forward, the person said in comments that Musk posted on X. After publication of this article, the Tesla CEO said that he had talked with Trump after the president made the decision and that he, quote, didn't know what was in the order, end quote. Over weeks of discussion with extensive input from tech industry leaders, the White House had arrived at a draft executive order that officials described as balancing concerns about safety with the needs of the industry. The order would have created a voluntary system under which companies would provide the government with an early look at frontier AI systems up to 90 days before public release, so agencies could test the models for dangerous capabilities, identify vulnerabilities and prepare defenses before hackers or foreign adversaries could exploit them. According to a draft of the order viewed by the Washington Post, the voluntary system was far less stringent than the mandatory testing that some of Trump's allies had called for. End quote. Spring has sprung, folks. As the weather warms up, it's a great time to take your routine outside to keep cool as the days warm up, Check out Vuori Clothing. Vuori is designed to keep you looking great both inside the gym and out in the world. 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It's also built with privacy in mind with enterprise grade compliance like SOC2, HIPAA and GDPR, stay present in the moment without losing what matters. Check it out at plod AI tbrh that's plodding p l a u d AI tbrh use code tbrh for 10% off all plod devices. But back to narratives once more. You'd better believe that Anthropic and OpenAI are competing to control the narrative in terms of who is in the lead in the AI race right now. So we're getting little drips and drabs leaking out from both of them like this. Quoting the Journal Anthropic's revenue is set to more than double to $10.9 billion in the second quarter, an explosive rate of growth that will help it turn an operating profit for the first time. The company disclosed the figures to investors as part of an ongoing funding round that is likely to push its valuation above OpenAI's Anthropic generated $4.8 billion in sales in the first quarter. Its quarterly revenue is now growing faster than Zoom did during the pandemic and Google and Facebook did in their run up to their initial public offerings. It is set to turn an operating profit of $559 million in the June quarter. Anthropic shared financial figures with investors last summer that suggested the company didn't expect to turn a full year profit until at least 2028. The company might not remain profitable for the full year as it plans spending increases due to its vast computing needs. Its operating profit includes the cost to train new models and excludes stock based compensation. So yeah, leaking that you're already profitable and are so two years ahead of your previous best case projection is certainly throwing chum in the water as it were. So over to you OpenAI for the counter quoting the information OpenAI generated about $5.7 billion in revenue in the first quarter, nearly $1 billion more than archrival Anthropic generated in the same period, according to two people with knowledge of the financials. OpenAI's coding agent, Codex, along with growth from selling to businesses and testing ads on ChatGPT, helped drive first quarter growth, according to one of the people. Since then, however, Anthropic appeared to leapfrog the ChatGPT maker, and Anthropic's recent growth rate could widen the gap between the two companies revenues by the end of this year. Anthropic's annualized revenue, or the past month's revenue multiplied by 12, recently neared $45 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the figures. OpenAI, in contrast, recently topped $30 billion in annualized revenue. Anthropic has also projected its revenue will more than Double to nearly $11 billion of revenue in the second quarter alone, plus a nearly $600 million surprise operating profit. OpenAI's second quarter outlook couldn't be learned, though. The company has seen gains in core products that could drive revenue growth since April. OpenAI launched GPT 5.5, which is stronger at breaking down tricky requests from users compared to older OpenAI models, and saw faster user growth from consumers with the release of its latest image generation model, according to one of the people. OpenAI's coding focused model, Codex has also seen significant uptick, the person said. OpenAI's first quarter data suggests that it is on track to hit its earlier goal of generating $30 billion in revenue in 2026. The data also showed it was still operating deeply in the red, and the company's chatbot user growth has stalled. OpenAI has told investors that its adjusted operating income margin was minus 122% in the first quarter, according to the people. That means that for every dollar of revenue the company generated, it lost $1.22, even after exceeding some large line items such as stock based compensation, according to one of the people. OpenAI faces another challenge growing ChatGPT usage. OpenAI's weekly active users for the quarter averaged about 905 million users, according to the two people. Although the company hit about 920 million weekly active users back in February, the lower average figure for the quarter implies that usage during the rest of the quarter was weaker than the February snapshot. The number of users at the end of March couldn't be learned. The company had expected to hit 1 billion weekly active users by the end of last year, but had warned employees to expect rough vibes as consumer AI rival Google made gains with its Gemini chatbot. A fraction of those hundreds of millions of users actually pay for ChatGPT. ChatGPT had 55 million Ping consumer subscribers for the first quarter, up from about 47 million at the end of the year, according to the people. Subscribers pay between $8 and $100 per month for more usage and extra features compared to non paying users. OpenAI plans to supersize its ChatGPT advertising business by the end of the decade, when it expects to generate about $122 billion in ad revenue by 2030. End. One weekend Long read for you this weekend, and it's a controversial one. You might have heard that birth rates around the world have been plummeting for at least a decade now. But some folks increasingly think technology itself is to blame, quoting the FT in more than two thirds of the world's 195 countries, the average number of children born to each woman has fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1. That keeps population stable without immigration. In 66 countries, the average is now closer to 1 than to 2. In sum, the most common number of children born to each woman is zero. Analysis of data ranging from population records to Google searches indicates that although many factors contribute to falling birth rates, the most recent plunge appears connected with our use of technology. Almost all of the world is now affected. Until recently, ultra low and rapidly falling birth rates were primarily a concern for rich countries. But many developing countries now have lower fertility rates than much wealthier ones. In several rich countries, including the US and the uk. A major barrier to forming families in recent decades has been housing, but this cannot account for the most recent steep decline or its global breadth. In the Nordic region, for example, fertility has fallen despite economic stability and a rise in the number of young adults living on their own rather than with parents or flatmates. Dissatisfied with purely economic explanations, researchers are beginning to point the finger at a new culprit the digital devices and platforms that play an outsized role in young people's lives. Across the world, the number of births fell first and fastest in the areas that received high speed mobile connectivity earliest. The authors of a recent study argue that smartphones have transformed how young people spend time with one another, sharply reducing in person socializing and leading to the collapse in their fertility. For example, us, British and Australian birth rates for teens and young adults were broadly flat during the early 2000s, but began to fall markedly from 2007. The same slide began in France and Poland around 2009 and in Mexico, Morocco and Indonesia around 2012. What had been steady declines in fertility in Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal became precipitous drops between 2013 and 2015. All of these inflection points coincided with the mass adoption of smartphones in local markets, as measured by Google searches for mobile apps in country after country, the birth rate plunged after the introduction of smartphones. No matter what the previous trend was, the younger the age group, the more pronounced the downturn. A mirror image of smartphone usage patterns Melissa Kearney, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, said it is, quote, quite plausible that the modern digital media environment has had profound effects on society that have led to a decline in romantic coupling among couples. Sexual dysfunction is higher for the young adults with the heaviest social media use, notes Finnish demographer Anna Rotric. She argues that the time taken up by social media and the values and lifestyles such platforms project has also made it harder for young adults to form committed relationships. End quote. So I will not have a regular episode for you on Monday because it is Memorial Day here in the us but I will have a bonus episode for you on Monday. It is the first How I AI episode and Chris Messina is back on to talk about how he has been using AI in his personal and professional everyday life, but also most of it is about me. I gotta go first with this show and tell stuff. Exactly one month ago April 22nd I sat down, opened a project on Claude and one month later I have Vibe coded. Not just a website, not just an app, but a fully featured AI powered SaaS product. Longtime listeners will probably be able to guess what the product does. Listen for that story, but also for my deeper learnings about how I got vibe, coding, religion, and maybe you can too. Talk to you on Tuesday. The Wired newsroom is known for award winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On WIRED's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people, building, challenging and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts.