The newsletter for ai builders of all levels. Mini-tutorials, tool reviews, and lay of the land from an exited founder turned investor and forever tinkerer.

Hey folks,

Let’s talk about voice.

It feels like there is a bit of a barrier to sitting at your computer and talking to it vs sending voice notes to friends. Voice is quicker. But clarity is better when it’s written down. So being able to see your own speech would be helpful for clarifying your thoughts.

But the problem with voice at the moment is it's an extra cost, extra latency, and can you get the accuracy? Whenever I use ChatGPT Voice Mode, it transcribes what I say into Welsh because I am Welsh and I've got a faint Welsh accent, but I can't speak a word of it. Not particularly helpful.

AssemblyAI have been partners of ours for a while now, and their latest Streaming Speech-To-Text API²⁰² is here. So think of streaming like when you ask ChatGPT or Claude a question, the output starts appearing a few lines at a time. That’s a much nicer experience instead of waiting for its full answer. For voice tools, streaming is hard because what your next few words are changes the interpretation of what you’ve already said.

AssemblyAI's API²⁰² now balances that with insane speed, cost, and accuracy. So you can build an experience that combines what your users are saying and the transcription that they see, without it feeling broken. I tested it, and did a little review, and I think you should check it out if you're building anything with voice or you want to add voice capability to your applications or workflows. I'm going to be adding it to a bunch of mine where I actually do like to see what I'm saying, which my current voice tools don’t do!

Or, watch on YouTube¹⁸⁴.

ChatGPT now has a study mode²⁷⁷. Instead of just doing the work, it guides students towards learning and finding answers on their own. Currently, it’s just a special prompt³⁴⁵ to nudge model behaviour, but OpenAI plans to bake that behaviour into its models over time.

NotebookLM can now make Video Overviews⁴¹⁰. It pulls in images and diagrams from your documents, creates new infographics and visuals as slides. I’ve already seen a few startups on the beat of “make a 3blue1brown-type animated video on a topic”, so expect more of such tools in the coming weeks.

And AI mode (in Google Search)¹¹² is getting some new features like file uploads, search with live video and images, and a writing canvas. Google’s promoting both these features from a studying pov, you can guess why.

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Mark Zuckerberg released a new memo called “Personal Superintelligence³⁴⁷”. I loved reading Om’s breakdown of it⁶⁸⁸. Also, a scoop from Wired claims Zuck made offers worth a billion dollars¹³⁰ (spread over a few years) to many people at Thinking Machines Lab (Mira Murati’s company), and everyone declined.

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🌐 What I’m consuming

• Behold the first AI-native investment bank⁴²⁵.

• Vibe code is legacy code⁴⁵⁵.

• Cursor’s lead designer built an operating system³⁶¹ with Cursor.

• Logan Kilpatrick’s latest podcast with Matan Grinberg, CEO of Factory AI¹⁷⁶ (I’m an investor).

YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=o3rE6cLVOH4¹⁷⁶

⚙️ Tools I’m looking into

• Airia¹³⁸ - The enterprise AI platform with built-in governance and security. Deploy agents across teams while maintaining enterprise compliance.*

• Snaptrude⁴⁰⁹ - Instantly turn messy docs into customizable requirements with an end-to-end platform for concept design.

• Gumboard⁴⁸⁰ - A free, real-time sticky note board to keep track of your tasks. (it’s open-source⁵⁸)

• Magic Patterns²⁸⁸ - The design tool to create and prototype new features for your product.

• Ollama²⁴⁴ has a desktop app to use local models with a ChatGPT-like interface.

• Eigent²⁴⁷ - A team of AI agents collaborating to complete complex tasks in parallel.

• Chilled Sites³⁶¹ - Super simple text-to-app builders with a TON of features (great for non-technical folks) - Paul’s shipping like crazy.

• Parse.bot^366† - Turn any website into an API.

• Terragon³⁰⁶ - Background agents for Claude Code. I’m using it a lot for firing off lots of agents, especially on mobile.

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🥣 Dev dish

• Exa Fast¹¹⁸ - A search API from Exa with <500ms latency (40% faster than Google Search).

• Claude Code¹⁴⁸ can now work in multiple directories in a single session.

• Crush by Charm¹³⁴ - A glamorous coding agent in your terminal (works with all major model providers)

• AutoRL²⁸⁷ - Write a single sentence to train a task-specific model.

• LangExtract²³³ - OS Python library from Google to reliably extract information from documents.

🍦 Afters

• Applications for the latest batch of HF0⁸⁶ (residency for ex-founders) are now open.

• First-ever Claude Code Office Hours¹⁹⁴ - today, 3 pm PDT.

• Anthropic is looking to raise at $170B valuation⁶², while Meta just increased its market cap by a similar number in just after-hours trading yesterday (puts all those offers from Zuck into perspective)

• Also, OpenAI announced Stargate Norway¹⁰⁶, its first AI data centre initiative in Europe.

That’s it for today. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts. 👋

• Find me on X⁵⁷, Linkedin¹³⁶, or Instagram⁴⁶

• Read about me³¹ and ben’s bites

📷 thumbnail creds: @keshavatearth³² - I remembered Asimov’s “The Fun They Had” when coming up with the idea for today’s thumbnail.