C_NCENTRATE #1036

A weirdly bitty week. General client work done. Prepped for speaking gigs. Met clients, spoke with sponsors, started early planning for TBD 2026. Attended The Meeting Show. Turned 44. Caught up with TBD alum Esther O’Callaghan OBE (Hundo), who sparked next week’s City AM column. Blame her.

POTATO hit 1,000 members in well under a month. Switching to a channel-based model with a £5/month paywall—aim: cut noise, boost signal, help members save on events, and re-ignite UK tech’s edge. Join the waitlist now. Entry will be limited once we flip the switch.

Promo’s locked for upcoming TNN events. Tickets live. Google / NotebookLM (July 17) is at 75% capacity. If you missed out last time, don’t wait. Shopify (Sept 18) has more room, for now.

Microsoft planned major job cuts across Xbox and gaming, while ChatGPT and Copilot rivalry deepened. Meta held acquisition talks with Runway to build its own in-house genAI stack, even as it poached OpenAI’s top reasoning researcher.

Amazon pledged £40B in new UK warehouse investment and competed with Starlink via Kuiper satellite expansion, pressing further into infrastructure. On the ground, Amazon is bringing same-day delivery to smaller towns to outflank Walmart. OpenAI was revealed to have quietly been working on hardware prototypes with iOS engineers for a while. Meanwhile, Mira Murati secured the year’s biggest AI seed round for her new venture, now valued at $5B.

Anthropic ran experiments letting Claude operate a real business — with “bizarre” results. Separately, it published research on Claude acting as a therapist, coach, and companion, opening new alignment questions. Google brought historical street view to Earth and joined a wildfire-tracking alliance from space. Meanwhile, ChromeOS rolled out Gemini AI integration.

Startups kept chugging along. Abridge raised at a $5.3B valuation to automate doctors’ notes. Decagon raised $131M for customer support AI. Finom closed €115M to scale SME-focused fintech. Tesla robotaxi footage raised more safety flags, Huawei’s new line exposed chip stagnation, and Reid Hoffman backed a brain-scanning AI startup that uses ultrasound.

Meta is on a hot streak, just not the kind it wants. Over the last six months, the company has tried and failed to acquire a who’s who of next-generation AI companies. Perplexity, Safe Superintelligence, Runway, PlayAI, Thinking Machines have all been approached. Zero acquisitions. A losing streak reflects the broader AI M&A environment, but it also reveals something deeper about Meta's evolving strategy and Zuckerberg’s latest reinvention.

On the surface, Meta is executing with clarity. Meta AI now runs across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Llama is being framed as a viable open-weight counter to GPT-4. Recruitment from OpenAI has intensified, with Meta poaching top researchers and offering bonuses in the $100 million range. The recent hire of a reasoning-focused lead signals a growing focus on inference and alignment systems that go beyond autocomplete.

Behind the aggressive hiring is a clear reality. Meta is being shut out of major deals. Perplexity turned to Scale AI. Runway passed on a deal. Safe Superintelligence said no and then saw its founder join Meta directly. PlayAI remains in talks, but may end similarly. Meta has become the acquirer of last resort. Founders want Apple's scale or Microsoft’s discipline. Meta still brings a heavy dose of reputational and regulatory baggage.

Zuckerberg is responding by shifting tactics and tone. He is recasting himself as a champion of open AI and speech neutrality. In recent interviews, Zuck’s positioning Meta as a decentralised, developer-aligned alternative to closed models and Big Tech lock-in. The Wall Street Journal reports this repositioning is already resonating with some defectors from OpenAI. Meta is leaning into this framing across Europe, where its “pay or consent” data policy is under scrutiny but unlikely to change in substance. Meanwhile, the company continues to fend off litigation, including a recent copyright win over AI training data.

Execution now matters more than M&A. Meta has the scale, infrastructure, and user reach to launch quickly. Bringing AI features to WhatsApp shows how they company can test products at population scale. Llama’s progress in open-weight benchmarking is also reshaping conversations around deployment flexibility and trust. But without landmark acquisitions, Meta has to build and prove more in-house. While undoubtedly a talented bunch, there’s a lot of side-eye happening from various parties about what history (‘borrowing’ behaviours) and the current talent roster means for Meta’s likely future.

SO WHAT?

Meta's AI play is fast becoming a test of patience and persistence. The market is saying no to Meta’s M&A offers, but users and infrastructure still give the company powerful leverage. Zuckerberg is now betting on open-weight relevance, vertical integration, and relentless recruiting to catch up. Costly, but Meta have nothing but money, and everything to lose.

The cultural repositioning is different. ‘MAGA Mark’, anti-censorship framing, and platform openness are all part of a bid to become the default home for developers and researchers disillusioned with closed labs. Meta has image issues which will hinder this and why +$100m salaries are needed. The risk for Meta is that this reframing doesn’t land, or annoys the very users Zuck and co hope want AI in everything. Or both. Either way, the regulators are looking at it all and starting to lick their lips, and grow a pair.

Zuckerberg’s history suggests the next phase is already in motion. When Meta gets shut out, it pivots inward (copying Snap/TikTok features), moves faster, and gets louder (more of Zuck himself). The result may not be the best model on the market, but it will be the most integrated.

[DO] Look at what Meta is having to do to get talent and what that means for their strategy. The company is having to build what it can’t buy, and people aren’t convinced the talent is in house right now.

[DON’T] Overlook distribution. Facebook has huge reach and that’s always something. Scale, compute, and user data are still in its favour. Assuming Meta is out of the race because it missed the top deals is a huge error.

▲ We are now in the era of covert microdrones (yup, China). /3 mins

The science world erupted as researchers are now working to create artificial human DNA. /4 mins

It’s not you, AI-generated fake bands are quietly taking over your playlists. /4 mins

Scientists can now turn plastic into paracetamol…with bacteria. /5 mins

A brilliant essay on the fragility of conversation, and why we fear what happens when words run out. /18 mins

Transfer fees for money sent home by international migrants were nearly as high as US foreign aid in 2023. /13 mins

The ‘SonicBoom’(!) robotic arm feels using sound. /5 mins

Bumble connected to OpenAI, and it went as well as you’d expect. /4 mins

DHL now has a robot that can now fully unpack a truck. /6 mins

Why artificial wombs aren’t going to reverse the population declines (but they will save lives). /18 mins

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Paul delivers actionable insights that keep companies ahead of the coming disruptions. As the founder of TBD Group and author of ‘Disruptive Technologies’, he is trusted by global brands, agencies, and when breaking news hits the FT, WSJ, BBC, and CNN ask for his analysis. Find out more and connect with him on LinkedIn and Bluesky.