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Brian McCullough
Welcome to the Techmeme ride home for Friday, June 13, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, do people know when they're using the Meta AI app? It's public. Chime had a successful IPO. So let me tell you about my IPO meter, the financials behind that fully AI commercial running during the NBA playoffs and more signs stablecoins are taking over. But in the long reads, do stablecoins represent a unique danger to the global financial system? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech something something AI, chatbots are the new vector for getting at or exposing your data. TechCrunch points out that the public feed of the Meta AI app is filled with private and sensitive information, suggesting that a lot of users might not be aware they are sharing their chats publicly. It sounds like the start of a 21st century horror film. Your browser history has been public all along and you had no idea. That's basically what it feels like right now on the new standalone Meta AI app, where swathes of people are publishing their ostensibly private conversations with the chatbot. When you ask the AI a question, you have the option of hitting a Share button, which then directs you to a screen showing a preview of the post, which you can then publish. But some users appear blissfully unaware that they are sharing these text conversations, audio clips and images publicly with the world. When I woke up this morning, I did not expect to hear an audio recording of a man in a southern accent asking, hey Meta, do some farts stink more than other farts? Flatulence related inquiries are the least of Meta's problems. On the Meta AI app, I have seen people ask for help with tax evasion if their family members would be arrested for their proximity to white collar crimes, or how to write a character reference letter for an employee facing legal troubles with that person's first and last name included. Others, like security expert Rachel Toback, found examples of people's home addresses and sensitive court details, among other private information. When reached by TechCrunch, a Meta spokesperson did not comment on the record. Whether you admit to committing a crime or having a weird rash, this is a privacy nightmare. Meta does not indicate to users what their privacy settings are as they post or where they are even posting to. So if you log into Meta AI with Instagram and your Instagram account is public, then so too are your searches about how to meet big booty women. Much of this could have been avoided if Meta didn't ship an app with the bonkers idea that people would want to see each other's conversations with Meta AI, or if anyone at Meta could have foreseen that this kind of feature would be problematic. There's a reason why Google has never tried to turn its search engine into a social media feed, or why AOL's publication of synonymized users searches in 2006 went so badly. It's a recipe for disaster. According to App Figures and App intelligence firm, the Meta AI app has only been downloaded 6.5 million times since it debuted on April 29, end quote so it is official. Meta Yesterday announced the $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI and the hiring of CEO Alexander Wang to help oversee its AI efforts. A Source says Scale AI's post money valuation is now $29 billion. Alexander Wang is departing day to day at Scale AI as CEO to join Meta and named Chief Strategy Officer Jason Droege as interim CEO. Wang will remain a board director at Scale. Bloomberg says that Meta's Scale AI deal dwarfs rivals Quote Reverse Aqui hires in scope and ambition, showing its fear of losing in AI outweighs any sort of concerns over regulatory backlash. Quote Meta's massive gambit for Scale AI shows just how far it will go to avoid falling behind in the AI arms race, despite watching Microsoft, Amazon and Google face months of regulatory probes for similar deals. Charging ahead at a time when it's already in a lawsuit with the ftc, which claims it is a monopoly, shows how Meta's worries over ceding ground to AI rivals outweigh the fear of regulatory backlash. Meta could have done this in a quieter way, maybe take a smaller stake, said Daniel Comb, an associate professor of management at Columbia Business School. This deal reflects Meta's impatience and fear that they're falling behind, end quote. Combs said the strategy is indicative that AI products have hit a plateau and that tech giants need to look beyond their own labs to gain an edge. A lot of products have reached a ceiling and they all look more or less the same, he said. So with this in mind, is it worth the risk? End quote Mark Gurman says Apple has set an internal release target of spring 2026 for that delayed upgrade of Siri as a part of an iOS 26.4 software update, quoting Bloomberg. The long promised changes will allow Siri to tap into customers personal data and on screen activities in order to better fulfill quer. Apple's dot 4 updates, known as E, on the company's internal software development schedule are typically released in March. That was the case with iOS 18.4 this year and iOS 17.4 in 2024, but an exact date hasn't been set internally for the software beyond a spring time frame, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work is private. The technology in the works also includes a system called App Intents that allows Siri to more precisely control applications and in app actions across Apple devices. If the latest release timing sticks, Apple will have gone nearly two years between announcing the new Siri and delivering it to consumers. It's been an especially high profile delay because the capabilities were part of the iPhone 16 marketing last year. Despite the new Siri not being close to ready internally, Apple's AI and marketing teams have pointed fingers at each other. The engineering side has blamed marketing for overhyping features, while marketing maintains it operated on timelines provided to them by the company's AI teams, according to people with knowledge of the matter. There also remains a debate debate over how much AI functionality Apple should be building itself and how much it should push off to partners like OpenAI. And the company has held internal discussions about buying smaller AI related startups. End quote. So maybe another accuhire like the scale AI1 coming down the road. Chime shares jumped 37% in their Nasdaq debut on Thursday, closing at $37.11 and giving the company a market cap of $13.5 billion. Quoting CNBC, Chime's IPO from a valuation perspective represents a big step down from where venture investors like Sequoia Capital valued the company in its last fundraising round in 2021, when private tech markets were raging. The valuation at that time was 25 billion. Still, Chime's offering is the latest sign that the FinTech IPO opening up after a multi year freeze brought on by rising interest rates and valuation resets. Recent debuts from Etoro and crypto company Circle have rekindled optimism in the sector, with both stocks seeing strong initial pops. Chime reported $518.7 million in revenue for the most recent quarter, a 32% increase from a year earlier. Net income narrowed slightly to $12.9 million, down from $15.9 million in the same period last year, CEO Chris Britt said. Chime has built a loyal user base by serving Americans earning $100,000 a year or less, a group often overlooked by traditional banks. Two thirds of our customer base use us as their direct deposit account and primary account relationship, Britt told CNBC's David Faber. We help our members avoid fees, get access to short term liquidity, build their credit and build their savings and it's that combination of services that really resonates and matters most to the everyday consumer. The average Chime customer completes more than 55 transactions per month using the Chime card and interacts with the app four to five times a day. Active member growth rose 23% in first quarter from a year earlier, Britt said. With 8.6 million monthly active users and an increasing number turning to Chime to serve as their primary banking relationship, customer acquisition doesn't come cheap. Chime disclosed in its prospectus that it spent $1.4 billion on marketing between 2022 and 2024. Britt said the retention rate is above 90% once users set up direct deposit. By the way, if you follow my socials, you'll know that just for fun, I've started keeping a running IPO meter. Where 0 is, the IPO, markets are closed and 10 is woohoo. We're partying like it's 1999 again. In other words, the meter keeps track of my sense of how open the public markets are for IPOs from tech companies. Check my pinned tweet on my account. Ryan MCC I think I'll keep the meter where it is right now, roughly 3.6 on that scale to 10. But if chimes shares rise over the next few weeks, maybe I'll nudge it up a bit. Sometimes the news has a tendency to pile on things I say almost immediately. What did I say this week about stablecoins taking over the world? Well, Shopify has announced it's partnered with Coinbase to enable USDC payments for its merchants through Coinbase's Base Layer 2 network. Starting with a limited group of merchants, but, well, you don't get much more tradfi than this. The Journal also says that Walmart, Amazon, Expedia and several large airlines have recently explored issuing or using their own stablecoins in the US to potentially save fees from cash and card transactions. Quote A move to launch a payment system by Walmart or Amazon that bypasses the traditional payment system would send shivers through the nation's banks with vast networks of customers and employees, troves of data and far lighter regulations. Retail and technology companies have long been viewed as particular threats to banks, including regional and community lenders. The retailer's final decisions could depend on a bill called the Genius act, which would begin to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins. The bill recently passed another procedural hurdle but still needs to clear the Senate and the House. Stablecoins could allow merchants to circumvent traditional payment rails, which cost them billions of dollars in fees each year, including the interchange fee they pay when customers make purchases using their cards. Payments can take days to settle, delaying the time it takes for merchants to receive the proceeds from sales. Stablecoins offer the possibility for a quicker process. They could be of particular interest to merchants with suppliers who are located abroad. Merchants have long tried to launch payment alternatives to get around the card based system that is dominated by Visa and MasterCard, though most of those have failed to gain traction. Amazon's efforts are still in the early stages, a person familiar with the discussion said, and some of the talks have centered on having the company's own coin for online purchases. The companies have also weighed how to use outside stablecoins, some of the people said. Even if they decide not to pursue their own, that could be through a consortium of merchants led by one stablecoin issuer. For example, mega banks have been considering a stablecoin consortium of their own, the Wall Street Journal has reported. End quote Summer is here. More sun, more light. More time to do all the things that make summer so special. And the number one thing you don't want to be doing all summer? Spending hours inside cooking. That's where Factor comes in. Factor's Chef Crafted Dietitian approved meals are ready in just two minutes, taking the hassle out of eating well. Factor Meals arrive fresh and ready to eat, perfect for any active lifestyle over summer and beyond. With 45 weekly menu options, you can pick gourmet meals that fit your summer gains and goals. Choose from options like Calorie, Smart, Protein plus, Keto and more. Factor powers your day sun up to sundown with nutritious breakfasts on the go, lunches, premium dinners and guilt free snacks and desserts. 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After switching to smalls, 88% of cat owners reported overall health improvements. That's a big deal. The team at Smalls is so confident your cat will love their product that you can try it risk free. That means they will refund you if your cat won't eat their food. What are you waiting for? Give your cat the food they deserve for a limited time only. Because you are a Techmeme right home listener. You can get 35% off smalls plus an additional 50% off your first order by using my code RIDE. That's an additional 50% off when you head to smalls.com and use promo code Ride again, that's promo code Ride for an additional 50% off your first order plus free shipping@smalls.com when we talk about how AI adoption right now is a lot about efficiency, which is really all about money, let me tell you about the ad that betting platform Kelshi aired during the NBA Finals. A 30 second ad, fully AI generated that costs about $2,000 to produce. Quoting the Verge, the AI generated ad highlights various things people are betting on, like whether the Oklahoma City Thunder or Indiana Pacers will win the NBA Finals, how many hurricanes will occur this year, and whether the price of eggs will go up this month. It flashes between scenes of an elderly man wearing a cowboy hat while carrying a Chihuahua, someone swimming in a pool of eggs, and an alien chugging beer. In a post on X, PJ Asantoro, who identifies himself as an AI filmmaker, says Kalshee hired him to create the ad using Google's text to video generator VO3. My colleague Allison Johnson recently called VO3 a slop monger's dream. This took about three to 400 generations to get 15 usable clips. As Satoro writes, one person two to three days. That's a 95% cost reduction versus traditional ads. End quote. Asseturo outlines his process for creating the ad, which he says involved writing a script and then asking Gemini to generate a shot list with prompts for VO3. I always tell it to return five prompts at a time. Any more than that and the quality starts to slip, asseturo writes. After generating the prompts, Aseturo says he pastes them into VO3 and puts together the ads using a video editing app like Capcut or Adobe Premiere Pro. It is time for the weekend Long Read Suggestions and what have we been talking about this week? We've been talking about stablecoins actually, though I've been sitting on this first particular long read for about a week before all this news broke. What if stablecoins are the thing that could trigger the next great financial crisis? Why? Because look at the underlying assets stablecoins are backed up with. Quoting the FT with stablecoins the promise is that a dollar is a dollar. They are meant to be backed one for one with reserves of equal value. Holders do not receive interest, but the operators often do to the tune of billions of dollars a year or any adjustment for inflation. But they do get to shoot something that smells a bit like real money around the crypto sphere with great ease. Back in 2021, warnings were emerging about the risk this poses to normal markets. Rating agency Fitch pointed out that if a stablecoin were to fold for any reason, it could be for of its holdings the dollar assets held in reserve upsetting the underlying markets. Last month a working paper from the bank for International Settlements, the central bank for central banks, cranked up the volume on that warning. In it, Rashad Ahmed and Inaki Aldesoro calculate that when stablecoins, of which tether is by far the biggest and most impactful draw in funds and churn them into reserves, that has a marked impact on the value of short term US government debt. That is a reassuring sign that stablecoin operators are indeed buying reserves to match their inflows. Still, this is a substantial and little understood market force. According to the researchers, large inflows of over $3.5 billion over five days can place enough upward pressure on the price of short term US government debt to pull down yields by up to.025 percentage points over 10 days. That does not sound like much, but the paper says it is comparable to that of a small scale quantitative easing on long term yields in the same ballpark as central efforts to stimulate a flagging economy. So that covers when stablecoin money comes in, but what happens when it goes out is more important. The impact on short term government debt prices is two to three times larger. When money comes in. Stablecoin operators can exercise some discretion over precisely how and when to buy reserves. When they face redemptions, they have to act faster. We might cheer the ascent of stablecoins as a side effect of the relentless crypto boosting from the Trump family as it helps on the margins to lower borrowing costs, although it might be preferable for people to cut out the intermediary and buy short term debt and enjoy the interest payments themselves. But if anything were to go wrong in crypto in future, hardly a wild theoretical exercise, we might all feel the ripple effects. And either way, it all adds an additional layer of complication for central banks. If the stablecoin sector continues to grow rapidly, it may eventually affect the pass through of monetary policy to treasury yields, the researchers say, adding that the opacity of reserve holdings disclosure by tether complicates efforts to model its policy possible impacts the financial stability risks embedded in all this, at a time when the US is seeking to foster greater growth in stablecoins are obvious. Stablecoin operators hold more short term US debt securities than large foreign investors such as China. Between them, they bought more than $40 billion worth of treasury bills in 2024. I want to say that last bit again. Stablecoins now hold more short term U.S. treasuries than China does finally today from the shortcut, a quick Nintendo Switch 2 review. They say it's got great build quality, better haptics and improved performance for Switch 1 games, but has a weak battery life and only a few launch titles. From their conclusion quote the switch 2 may disappoint some who were hoping for another left field approach from Nintendo. But honestly, Nintendo would have been foolish to throw away such a winning formula. Instead, it has delivered the ultimate version of the Switch, one that will no doubt be imitated but never beaten rival companies in the years to come. This is the best console Nintendo has ever made. Period. Now it just needs the same suite of compelling software we saw on Switch to truly earn that honor. It's off to a strong start with the excellent Mario Kart World, but Nintendo needs to keep that momentum going thanks to all the offers to help me with my Google AdWords mess. If you didn't hear from me, I still appreciate you reaching out. Nonetheless, I'm keeping all of your emails in a folder so maybe we can work together in the future. I'm gonna give you a weekend omnibus episode this weekend reminder that you can get the omnibus episode every weekend ad free and also get every single episode ad free by signing up for the Premium feed at Tech Supercash Tech. Talk to you on Monday.