2026-06-22 04:01:58
Don't meddle. It's one of those oft-stated golden rules of Hollywood that has been broken left and right by the movie studios basically since the dawn of the industry. Apple even more or less has an entire show built around the premise in The Studio. Still, it's considered a cardinal sin for a studio – and certainly any corporate parent – to mess with the creative process of making a movie. And it has come up more often in recent years with all the change happening in Hollywood and all the studios changing hands once again – and especially with Big Tech giants now fully wading into the Hollywood waters.
That's sort of the undercurrent of the news that Amazon MGM is ditching Artificial, Luca Guadagnino's movie about OpenAI. No one is coming out and directly saying it, but it's pretty clear what's going on here: Amazon is meddling.
Now, to be clear and fair, they're not messing with the actual creative process. The movie is basically done, to the point where it is being screen for test audiences (we'll come back to that). But what Amazon is doing is arguably worse: they're meddling with the distribution of the film. It's not exactly muzzling Guadagnino – at least not yet, but if they can't find a new home for Artificial, that's effectively what they're threatening.
You have to believe they'll find a home, because it's a movie about OpenAI! Even if you don't buy that there will be general interest in the overall AI narrative, and even if you don't think the always-in-the-news nature of OpenAI will help this movie garner buzz, the fact that there's a pretty direct, successful analog in David Fincher's 2010 film The Social Network, which won three Oscars and was nominated for Best Picture while earning over $200M at the box office, seems like a good signal.1 It's a movie that was so successful, that it's getting a sequel in this year's The Social Reckoning. But the premise of Artificial feels far more Social Network in nature. So yeah, someone is going to pick it up. If nothing else, this new controversy around Amazon dropping it can probably only help its prospects!
If it wasn't a must-see movie before, it is now!
That's part of why it's wild that Amazon is doing this. But the bigger part is the fact that they greenlit and saw the entire product through to completion. Various executives at Amazon MGM read the various iterations of the screenplay. They hired the acclaimed director to helm it. They watched cuts of the movie as it progressed. They were all-in, until suddenly they weren't.
So what happened?
Well, again, they're not directly saying it, but it's pretty clearly related to Amazon's relationship with OpenAI. When the movie was greenlit and being made, Amazon had only a loose relationship with the startup for some cloud dealings. Instead, they were the big backer of Anthropic, OpenAI's chief rival, which of course is comprised of a disgruntled team which spun-out of OpenAI. I won't go so far as to say that a sort of anti-OpenAI movie was set up on purpose to help Anthropic, but it couldn't have hurt Amazon's big AI bet!
But then OpenAI changed their arrangement with Microsoft. And that suddenly opened them and their models for business beyond Azure. So it was only natural that the biggest cloud company, Amazon, would seek to sell the models from the biggest AI company, OpenAI. Just how interested was Amazon in getting OpenAI sold through AWS? Well, how does $50B sound? As in the amount Amazon has promised to invest in OpenAI through a series of equity investments tied to their partnership.
Of course that partnership goes both ways. And so if, say, OpenAI doesn't like something about the way Amazon is treating them and thinks it's not helping said partnership well... What I'm saying is that a $50M movie that seemingly casts OpenAI and certainly CEO Sam Altman in a bad light is probably a pretty easy thing for Amazon to walk away from rather than their $50B deal with said company.
Is it possible that the movie is just bad? I suppose that's possible, but even if that's true and Amazon wants to distance themselves from a stinker, the comments being made here and the reports on the matter don't suggest that. Also, it's Hollywood. A ton of bad movies – truly bad movies – are made every year. They still get released. If Amazon didn't think Artificial was good but already bankrolled the entire thing through to completion, they could have put it on Prime Video after perhaps a limited theatrical run to keep Guadagnino happy (more on this general strategy in a minute). Even if it's bad, given the hot topic and talent, it undoubtedly would have done well on streaming. Amazon uses their streaming service to salvage bad movies all the time. It just doesn't make sense for Amazon to walk away from this movie if it's simply and subjectively "bad". I don't buy that.
Again, just look to the statements on the matter:
"We have the utmost respect and admiration for Luca Guadagnino as an award-winning filmmaker—not to mention a longstanding relationship that we hope to continue. We believe that 'Artificial' will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home."
That doesn't read like a studio trying to ditch a bad movie. That sounds like a studio trying to not directly come out and say that they need to not be associated with the project now for other reasons. "We believe" and "better served" are the two key phrases. It's as if to say, "it's not you, it's us."
Added to all of this is what's referenced here: Amazon MGM and Guadagnino have worked together in the past on his films After the Hunt and Challengers. They're not just burning a relationship, they're potentially burning a long-standing partnership. Here's Guadagnino's statement on the matter:
...
Yeah, he's pissed. Obviously. "Shocked" says at least one source to Nicole Sperling at The New York Times.
But should he have been "shocked"? Perhaps not if he's been following the entire OpenAI saga, which presumably he has given, you know, the film. Maybe he thought his relationship with Amazon MGM was strong enough to counter any risk here. Or maybe he simply thought Amazon wouldn't dare. After all, again, the movie was done and they were a part of it every step of the way. But perhaps that aforementioned screening played a role. Here's Ellise Shafer and Alex Ritman for Variety:
Variety understands that, prior to being dropped by Amazon, “Artificial” already had several test screenings, which went down very positively, and screened for other studios on Thursday. According to an insider who has seen the movie, the characters of Altman and Musk are the least sympathetic and the ones audiences would “like the least.” It’s also understood that Amazon had seen all the early iterations of the script, before Guadagnino boarded the project.
First and foremost, "very positively" would seem to negate the notion of the movie being bad. Yes, it's subjective. And yes, people who get to see movies early tend to like them more than they might normally, but test screenings are both and art and a science. The studio would be able to gauge if a movie is a disaster-in-the-making and saying the screenings went down not just positively, but "very positively" suggests the quality is not the issue. But the substance may be... at least for Amazon.
Again, who is surprised by this reaction? Given all the endless reporting – and now legal testimony – on the matter, was Amazon expecting a movie in which anyone, let alone Altman, came out looking good?
And then there's Elon Musk. Would Amazon sweat pissing off the world's first trillionaire? Given that he's the chief rival of their founder, probably not. Then again, given that he controls a certain social network, perhaps there was some level of concern. But certainly not to the level of OpenAI. Again, now a massive strategic partner and investor. Also, a friendship between those two founders probably didn't help this situation:
It’s known that Altman and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos have a relationship and Altman even attended Bezos’ wedding in Italy last year.
One has to imagine that subsequent reporting will pull out a bit more here. Was Altman concerned that such a movie is going to lead to more threats against him or his family? That certainly seems more legitimate than just the ongoing concern about the backlash against AI more generally – but it's impossible to know without actually seeing the movie if there's any merit to that, I'm just trying to come up with some sort of scenario that could quickly change Amazon's mind.
Amazon is clearly positioning this as a Mike Hopkins decision. Here's Matt Belloni, who originally scooped this shitshow for Puck:
One source familiar with Amazon’s rationale told me the tone of Artificial shifted markedly darker in the final product from the script by Simon Rich (SNL, Pixar) and how the project was pitched and developed by Guadagnino, who previously directed Challengers and After the Hunt for Amazon. Hopkins watched a cut of the film and decided to pull the plug.
Sure, the Amazon MGM/Prime Video studio boss may have technically made the call. But he also doesn't live in a vacuum. And he certainly doesn't work in one! He's clearly making that decision recognizing all of the above. And so it's really a call of whom he wants to piss off: OpenAI/Sam Altman or Luca Guadagnino and all the talent involved with Artificial? Again, one is a $50B deal, the other is a $50M deal. We're talking three orders of magnitude here. It's just math.
Of course, it isn't just math. Just ask Apple.
One can't help but be reminded of their call a couple years back to kill the wide theatrical release of Wolfs. While that had nothing to do with the subject matter of the movie – Apple seemingly wasn't worried about the hit man lobby – it did still have to do with the math. As in, Apple seemed pretty certain there was no way the movie would work at the box office. At least not to the extent it would need to in order to at least look like a hit – a feat they did manage to pull off with their barely (if at all) profitable, but feted F1.
But with Wolfs, the problem was twofold: George Clooney and Brad Pitt. As in, the stars. Apple risked pissing them off by pulling the plug but felt like they had to do so anyway – perhaps part of the pitch was that it wouldn't look good for any of them if/when the movie flopped at the box office. They made the right call but arguably a dumb decision given the reputation risk associated with killing Wolfs – again, a movie that was done and on the verge of release.
And sure enough, shortly after the decision was made, the director, Jon Watts, let his true feelings be known. He felt betrayed because he was betrayed. But there, at least Apple still released the movie – just on a much smaller theatrical scale and with a wide push to Apple TV.2 With Artificial, Amazon just wants it gone.
And beyond the Guadagnino situation, there are massive stars in Andrew Garfield and the clearly on-the-rise Monica Barbaro. How are they going to feel about taking their next movie to Amazon MGM?
Movies switching studios isn't completely unprecedented, but it is pretty unprecedented for this particular reason. And it undercuts the credibility of the entire studio at a time when they perhaps need it most as they gear up to start production on the first James Bond film fully under their purview. The director they landed for that endeavor, Denis Villeneuve, is well known for his strong stances on cinema and artist integrity. So yeah, I can't wait to hear what he thinks about this! Maybe he should poke the bear and make Blue Origin the new SPECTRE?
Or maybe Luca Guadagnino should have just sucked it up and done what Amazon really wanted, which is to make a movie in the style of the "documentary" of Melania Trump.
The fact that this is the other narrative floating in the background here makes this all extra wild. The last time Amazon was in the news in a major way for a film was when they not only bought the Melania doc, but they apparently paid $75M for it – way, way, way above market, with potentially $28M going straight to Mrs. Trump herself. Oh yes, and it was made by a director who was fully cancelled and ostracized in Hollywood. Somehow, Brett Ratner returned, one might say.
But really, somehow none of that managed to derail that movie. In fact, it got a White House premiere! Tim Cook came! Bezos is proud of it. What a fucking farce.
Look, at the end of the day money always talks and more often than not wins. So perhaps none of this has actual long term ramifications for Amazon. But if Artificial turns out to be good and perhaps wins awards if not the box office,3 this whole narrative will keep coming up. That Amazon meddled.
Update June 22, 2026: A bit more unfolding of this narrative...
No home yet for Artificial, but it sounds like things are getting close with Mubi, but perhaps more interesting is all those that passed:
Several of the buyers who screened Luca Guadagnino’s hotly anticipated “Artificial” in the days after Amazon MGM Studios abruptly dropped the film have passed on acquiring it, sources tell Variety.
Focus Features, Warner Bros.’ Clockwork, A24 and Netflix have all stepped away, according to those sources. But the Sam Altman drama, which is nearly completed, isn’t without suitors. Variety has learned that Mubi is pursuing the film, with Neon also possibly circling.
Each of those smaller houses (and Netflix) would seem to be right in the wheelhouse for this type of movie. So what's going on? Maybe it is just bad?
I continue to believe it has little to do with quality and more to do with a fear of pissing off the powers-that-be in AI. In particular, if it leads to lawsuits:
The picture is rumored to be portraying Altman as a pathological liar and Musk (Ike Barinholtz) as highly antipathetic.
This is a company and industry in the midst of a perception crisis. They're going to push back against any negative portrayal and it's sounding a lot like this one may cast them all in an extremely negative light.
One more thing:
Even for independent companies with AI ambitions or big tech entanglements, there could be reasons for being cautious around the film. A24, for instance, is backed by Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, which holds a seat on the board and ranks among OpenAI’s largest and most high-profile backers.
Yeah, that would seem to be an easy no-go.
1 The fact that both feature Andrew Garfield helps too! ↩
2 A more interesting parallel may be with Savant the Jessica Chastain-led Apple TV show that Apple pulled shortly before release – and right after the murder of Charlie Kirk. ↩
3 The fact that the screenings all seem to suggest the movie is good adds yet another wild layer to this. That doesn't mean it will be a hit, of course. But you could certainly see it as the type of movie that taps into the zeitgeist at the right time. Much like The Social Network did once upon a time! ↩
2026-06-20 02:43:36
For all the talk about how "hackquisitions" were circumventing the traditional guardrails around M&A, we seem to have overlooked something vital: for such deals to work, they have to actually, you know, work. And the early returns suggest that perhaps they're not really working out...
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
🐥 Amazon Chickens Out of OpenAI Movie – I was just wondering what was going on with Artificial given that filming wrapped months ago, but we hadn't yet seen a trailer. Well, now we may know why... The movie is suddenly homeless. Regardless of how anti-OpenAI and/or anti-Altman this movie is, it's obviously an awful look for Amazon to kill it. After it's done, no less. The message from all of the tech players playing in Hollywood has always been that it's about the art and that they wouldn't meddle in artistic decisions. I mean, I guess they're not here, technically, just opting not to distribute the movie after promising to do so. That's arguably worse. And it's especially worse seeing as it's the same company that paid $75M to make a documentary about the President's wife. To keep layering on: the Melania movie featured a disgraced director exiled from Hollywood, while Artificial has one of the hottest directors in the world. If all of that gave Amazon pause, it certainly didn't stop them. Once they saw a cut, they clearly thought it was better to cut ties here, rather than risk angering their AI partner in which they have a massive equity stake. Yes, those deals came about after the movie was greenlit, but my god, how shortsighted. Artificial will obviously find a new home – Amazon better hope the movie isn't any good. But I'm not sure how much it will matter in Hollywood with the Scarlet Letter of meddling now firmly affixed to Amazon's studios. What does, say, Denis Villeneuve think of this, one wonders... [Puck 🔒]
📺 Netflix as the New Cable TV Front-End – Their deal with France's TF1 (which I first wrote about a year ago when it was announced, noting that Netflix really is now TV) makes Netflix the hub for both services, blending recommendations, 'Continue Watching', etc. This is a far deeper integration than what Amazon and others are doing with their 'Channels' strategy and clearly seems to be the future of streaming in many countries (Amazon has similar deals in place around the world for Prime Video). And as YouTube TV continues to eat traditional cable's lunch, might we see other regional cable providers in the US hand over the keys to Netflix? Comcast, the largest, would presumably try to do it through Peacock? But Peacock remains a far smaller player. More interesting would be if YouTube tries to get into this game. There's probably too much conflict with YouTube TV, but it increasingly feels like Netflix and YouTube are on a collision course to be the main hub/UI of streaming. I mean, they already are in many ways, but with others' content – including perhaps Peacock and the like. This also takes Netflix deeper down the live content rabbit hole, of course – and advertising too, though it sounds like those details are still in progress. [THR]
👻 Snap Spins Off An AI Company – This almost reads like a reverse-"hackquisition" in a way. 'Dotmo' will take a team from and have a licensing agreement with Snap, in return, Snap will get a large equity stake in the stand-alone company. But they won't be investing at all – because this is about Snap saving money, after all – but Snap co-founder Bobby Murphy will be in a personal capacity. Spin-offs are nothing new, of course. But again, not investing but having a co-founder invest is an interesting hack. As I wrote earlier this week, it feels increasingly like Snap made the wrong bet on AR versus AI – yes, they were betting on both to some degree, but it was clearly the wrong mix. At the same time, now they don't have the capital or the mandate from Wall Street to invest in both going forward so... Dotmo will go it "alone". And presumably have no trouble raising more outside funding as an AI company. Perhaps at a large enough valuation, it can reverse-acquire Snap, Elon-style?[TechCrunch]
🐆 Kissing the Leopard's Ass Before He Eats Your Face – How shocking it must be for Zuckerberg and Bezos to learn that President Trump is mocking them behind their backs, showing off the private messages they send him to others to showcase them "kissing my ass". Ahead of the inauguration, as Zuck embarrassingly scrambled to showcase his new allegiance, I asked, "What's the world record for kissing ass? We're likely to find out." Trump clearly agrees! And can't stop telling everyone all about it. With Tim Cook too. Even more embarrassing for these guys: one of the people Trump likes to show these message too is Elon – his on-again/off-again PaidPal. "First-class groveling," was his quoted assessment as he must have laughed while Bezos tried to convince Trump to ditch SpaceX for Blue Origin for some contracts. That's the thing: given their business interests, what choice do these guys have but to grovel? If they don't, they get thrown into the doghouse. They undoubtedly could be less overt, but Trump loves the performative nature of such things. Hence, Cook's golden trinket. And you could probably argue that this humiliation has paid off, quite literally! But the real price was dignity, which they'll have to live with selling off. Which will look especially bad when all of them inevitably start to turn on Trump again as he becomes a lame duck. [Wired 🔒]
"When I told that story to George Lucas in 1977, when we were in Hawaii together getting ready for the release of Star Wars: A New Hope, he said, ‘I have something better than Bond. It’s called Indiana Smith,’ which is what it was called at the time. He told me the premise of the Indiana Jones series, and that’s how I got that job."
– Steven Spielberg, revealing how the Cubby Broccoli rejecting him on the notion of directing a James Bond film (twice) led to Raiders of the Lost Ark. I linked to this last week too, but the quotes are just amazing.
🎶 Listening to Fantastic Cat - So Glad You Made It
🍺 Enjoying a Stroud LOL Light Lager
🇬🇧 Sent from London, England
2026-06-19 23:19:07
The news that Noam Shazeer is (once again) leaving Google seems like a big deal. The news that he's joining OpenAI, which turned the transformer paper he helped write into a product that he couldn't launch (in his first stint) at Google seems like an even bigger deal. Bigger still may be the fact that he had rejoined to help the Gemini product take on ChatGPT, which was seemingly working, at least to some degree. But actually, the biggest deal has to be the actual deal that brought him back to Google. Because it wasn't even two years ago when Google paid $2.7B to bring Shazeer back.
And like that – poof – he's gone.
To be fair, there were others on the Character.ai team that Google seemingly wanted too. The non-exclusive licensing rights for Character? Probably less so. If anything, that aspect of the deal has ranged from a headache to a nightmare.1 But clearly it was a deal structure in such a way to get Shazeer back with an offer he couldn't refuse. And he didn't. Until he did. Again.
That deal structure, of course, was one of the early "hackquisitions" – a deal to bring on a company's key talent without acquiring the company itself. Because that clearly would have been messy from a regulatory perspective for any of Big Tech. If nothing else, such deals would be bogged down for months while they're scrutinized. A "hackquisition", by contrast, could be done almost instantly. Because they were structured to leave the actual company behind as a sort of hollowed-out husk. Not exactly a carcass because they weren't exactly dead but not fully alive either. A place to pick up the phone if the government calls. And to collect licensing fees.
And again, the deals were set up in ways so that those with power couldn't really say "no" – be it the founding team or investors. The employees left behind sometimes got screwed, but the "hackquiring" company often tried to do the right thing so as not to draw that eye and ire of Washington.
As such deals kept happening, Washington obviously started to look at these deals anyway. But the pace at which Washington moves have allowed them to continue unabated. Of course, something else now runs the risk of ending such deals: the fact that they don't seem to be working out. Let's look back at some of the big ones.
The first such "hackquisition" clearly drew inspiration from the deal Microsoft almost did with OpenAI employees (from Sam Altman on down) during "The Blip". Such a deal, had it happened, would have looked pretty wild now given that OpenAI is valued at $852B. And, of course, constantly clashing with their benefactor. Anyway, as a result of Altman and OpenAI getting back to work, Microsoft turned their gaze elsewhere – to the AI startup co-founded by their board member Reid Hoffman.
But that deal wasn't about bringing Hoffman on board beyond the board, it was seemingly all about bringing on Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of DeepMind who left after the Google acquisition and started Inflection with Hoffman, raising a ton of money (for the time) in the process. After failing to get any sort of early traction and undoubtedly needing to raise billions more to effectively compete, it was seemingly an easy call when Microsoft came calling with $650M.
Again, not for the company, but for Suleyman and his team (and for the investors, which, yes, also included Hoffman). Fast-forward to today, just over two years later and Microsoft is certainly more independent in AI. But they're not necessarily in a better place, as the many re-orgs and re-brandings of Copilot have showcased. Meanwhile, Suleyman himself was recently moved from spearheading that product and team to focusing on foundation models instead.
$650M is relatively small by today's AI standards, but it's not clear what Microsoft actually got out of it. The consumer version of Copilot made to look like Pi, Inflection's product, clearly hasn't worked. And the team is now led by someone else so...
A few months after the Inflection deal, that other Seattle-based tech company tried their hand at a "hackquisition". The deal for Adept was roughly half the size at $330M, but the idea was the same: get the co-founders on-board with Amazon's AI team. Most notably, David Luan was tasked with starting their "AGI Lab".
We're not even two years removed from that deal and yet 4 of the 5 Adept co-founders have already left Amazon. That includes Luan, who had previously worked at both Google and OpenAI, and left this Amazon past February. That team did launch one product, Nova Act, but it's not clear how useful that actually is to Amazon.
This deal, just a couple months later, was more under-the-radar than Adept, but may have actually been slightly larger. It has also been an even bigger headache, with a whistleblower saying that the left-behind Covariant company is just a "zombie" shadow company. Still, Amazon may have gotten some robots out of the deal even if the team seems to be pretty much gone.
We've been over this one.
The big one. While the nearly $15B deal technically structured a bit different than the other "hackquisitions" – namely in that Meta acquired a very specific 49% stake in Scale – the idea was still the same: bring AI talent on board to Meta, fast.
And specifically, Mark Zuckerberg zero'd in on Alexandr Wang as the guy who would reboot Meta's AI efforts, putting their Llama out to pasture, as it were. We all know what happened from here – mega offers led to mega chaos both around the entire AI ecosystem and within Meta itself. The latter is still playing out, with at least some believing that Wang's Scale culture and techniques are eating Meta alive from within.
At the same time, the new "Superintelligence" group has be able to build and ship their first models in record time. They're not yet frontier, but by all accounts they're good. So Zuckerberg, at least for now, has gotten the outputs he's wanted, though the inputs remain perhaps an issue. And Meta's stock has been hammered hard with investors still concerned about Meta's AI path going forward given the billions spent, with hundreds of billions more to come.
This is still more TBD – like the name of the sub-group Wang runs – but it's not trending particularly well if the moves really end up ripping Meta apart.
A strange deal even by "hackquisition" standards. Meta essentially bought the book of Nat Friedman's and Daniel Gross' fund so that they could bring those two on board to help with their AI efforts. But that also mean Gross would have to leave the AI startup where he was not only a co-founder, but the CEO: Safe Superintelligence. Ilya Sutskever did not seem happy about that, as you might imagine. Especially since Zuckerberg had tried to "hackquire" SSI, but Sutskever shot him down (though Meta did apparently invest).
Friedman's role has seemingly shifted a couple times with constant re-orgs and shuffles in the aforementioned chaotic Meta environment. Gross is now working on Meta's infrastructure build-out for AI.
This was a layered shitshow as OpenAI had originally agreed to acquire – as in actually acquire – Windsurf, then backed out (perhaps due to Microsoft). Google then stepped in to save the day – except the "hackquisition" nature of the deal led to a huge backlash because of the group being left behind, apparently without any sort of compensation. And so another AI startup, Cognition, stepped in to save the day from the already saved day. Fun times.
That brings us to today, while there have been a few other "hackquisitions", they're either too small or too new – most notably, NVIDIA's $20B mega deal to bring on board Groq talent, where yes, the IP license actually seems to matter – to know how well they'll play out. But it's pretty clear that the first crop didn't pan out as the "hackquirerers" would have hoped. At best, the situations are messy. At worst, they're shitshows – or really no-shows, with the talent now gone.
Shazeer is the biggest of those to date – again, in less than two years after a $2.7B deal. Can't wait to hear more about what happened there. But it could be as simple as these "hackquisitions" not aligning incentives very well...
1 And yes, there are reports that Shazeer was a headache for Google too internally in this second stint. ↩
2026-06-18 23:17:14
Snap's stock is down again today and it's now below an $8B market cap. Safe to say the market doesn't think Specs will ignite a turnaround. But they're also in a weird position where thanks to super-voting shares, the "normal" market mechanisms, don't really apply here. So is it crazy to think they should team up with PE and go private again?
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
🍎 “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable." – It has come to this. Apple, the company which prides themselves in price stability for consumers is being forced to raise prices due to the chip crunch. Tim Cook clearly knows what a shock to the system it will be – even a $100 raise here or there will undoubtedly dent sales, and if the iPhone price increase needs to be substantial, watch out. It's really pretty wild that this is one of Cook's last moves as CEO. The operations master who has priced Apple products to perfection (from a margin-perspective) has been sideswiped by the market. And it's coming at the worst possible time given that the new Siri AI functionality relies on more RAM, which means Apple has to boost it across their devices to ensure the features will work well – so they can't really just offer options with less memory. A real sort of changing of the guard moment, not just for Apple (John Ternus will have to be the one on stage in September unveiling the new iPhone pricing) but also for the industry, as it's now the various AI players, led by NVIDIA, that commands inventory more so than Apple. Rolfe Winkler has a nice, quick overview video for his scoop too. [WSJ 🔒]
⚔️ Epic's 'Team Open' Plea – When he's not busy battling Apple in (and out of) court, Tim Sweeney returns to his day job running Epic Games which, App Store issues aside, is... in a bit of a precarious place. Why? Roblox. Sweeney is clearly terrified that it's eating Fortnite and making the case that it's taking the whole industry with it. So he's calling on everyone else to link arms and fight for an "open" ecosystem – which sounds less like an "open" alliance and more like an anti-Roblox alliance. Only tangentially stated is his hope/belief that Epic will power all of this via their Unreal Engine and/or – more ideally – banding together with Fortnite directly. He obviously still wants to make the Metaverse – his Metaverse – happen, and he sees it slipping away. Help us, Josh D'Amaro, you're our only hope? That is, unless maybe Microsoft wants to shed Mojang to merge Minecraft into the effort? [GamesBeat]
🔨 Siri to the Studs – Why does the new Siri work now whereas previous attempts the past 15 years or so have not? They had to completely rebuild it from scratch. So said team lead Mike Rockwell at the smaller, more technical event following the WWDC keynote last week. He noted that while they quickly built a new version last year that was on top of the existing Siri, it was "sort of incremental", so they scrapped it and completely rebuilt it, which obviously took longer. In other words, it sounds like Apple went through the exact same exercise that Amazon did with Alexa. This could not be less surprising to me as I've written about this very topic numerous times – that Apple and Amazon were in particularly bad spots when the LLM revolution came because of their previous success with Siri and Alexa, respectively. While those original systems seem comically rudimentary by today's AI standards, they were breakthroughs at the time and as such, gained millions of users – users neither company wanted to just abandon. But whereas both clearly thought you could build a bridge between the two technologies, you really couldn't. Even Google keeps seeing endless edge cases break as they update 'Assistant' with Gemini. Anyway, good to see Apple took the harder, needed steps, though they probably should have known they'd need to do that a few years ago... [9to5Mac]
"This is a hundred-year flood. I’ve never seen anything like it in any area in over 40 years."
– Tim Cook, in his interview linked to above about Apple's need to raise prices due to memory chip shortages.
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• AirPods with Cameras Set for Late 2027
• OpenAI Poaches Google's Hackquired Talent
• SpaceX's "Cheap" $60B Deal
• Anthropic's Breach... of Trust
• Meta's Ongoing Turmoil
2026-06-18 00:22:29
Look, it's easy to dunk on Snap's new Specs.1 They're big and bulky, last for four hours, and cost $2,195. That said, there are obviously impressive bits too – namely in the fact that they don't require you to tether to a power brick (as the Vision Pro does) or a puck (as Meta's AR glasses have thus far). The main thing I'm worried about is that they're seemingly not ready to let anyone actually use them yet. Perhaps not a surprise given they're aiming to ship in the fall. But who on Earth would pre-order these at that price point without at least someone vouching for them? Snap may be popular with the youths, but they're not Apple when it comes to consumer hardware. Also, even Apple has had a hell of a time selling the Vision Pro.
To be fair, people have been trying the Specs for quite a while, but older versions that were a dev kit for this one. The impressions range from people impressed by aspects to those frustrated by many others. That, I suspect, will be roughly the same reaction to these consumer-oriented Specs. But again, it's just hard to see how you can justify the price point. Snap itself can because they have a business to run. And well, it hasn't been running so smoothly, at least from a stock perspective in recent years. The reality here is that they simply can't afford to sell these Specs at a massive loss, quite literally.
And while Evan Spiegel is quick to point out that the original Mac was also insanely expensive, and that the Vision Pro still is, again, Snap is not Apple. And again, the Vision Pro hasn't sold well! Neither did the Mac at first!
So why on Earth is Snap launching these now?
Well, for one thing, Spiegel said they would. He previously promised they were coming in 2026. Lest his product be tagged with the dreaded "vaporware" label, he's aiming to get them out the door before the end of the year – note the "Expected to ship starting Fall 2026" wording on their site.2 "Expected" is seemingly doing some work there...
For another thing, as mentioned, Snap is in a tricky spot as a company. While the core product, Snapchat, continues to hum along with their key demographic, life as a public company is hard. They've simply never been able to monetize as well as their main rival Meta and that, in turn, has given them even less leeway with Wall Street when it comes to far afield bets such as this one. Also, Wall Street has long hated Meta's bet on the Metaverse and clearly views this as analogous – though again, without the great profit engine to back it up.
Spiegel would say – and is saying – that Specs are simply an extension of what Snap has always been doing with Snapchat. That is, a "more human" approach to bring technology into your life. And that they've owned and perfected "AR" for years at this point, albeit on smartphones. Again, Specs aim to bring that further into the real world. Spiegel is good at selling his vision, he always has been, the problem comes when he actually puts on the product (more on that below).
But the real problem is the price point. Thinking through the strategy a year ago, I noted that it felt like sub-$1,000 was key – and the closer to $500, the better. Well, there goes that dream. You can blame tariffs or trade wars or actual wars or memory chip wars, the reality is that $2,195 is just not going to cut it. It's just hard to see anyone buying it, be it Wall Street all the way down to consumers.
That's harsh, but also just reality. At the same time, it is hard to see what other choice Snap has. Their attempt to make the Spec's business a separate subsidiary with other funding possibilities hasn't eased Wall Street concerns. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Meta and Apple continue work to come after the space. Those efforts seem further out with "smartglasses" (think: less AR and more AI) the focus for now.
Therein probably lies the answer. Snap probably should have doubled down on AI instead of AR. But hindsight is obviously 20/20 – even in Specs. One can almost envision a world in which Snap was a player in "human-centric AI" right now, an angle that everyone from Meta to Microsoft is trying to own as the backlash against AI continues to swell. Meta was able to pivot from their Metaverse bet, but it took billions upon billions of dollars. Snap simply doesn't have that luxury. Or time.
Because, again, Wall Street continues to punish the stock. To the point where at some point, one has to imagine Snap is an attractive takeover target. Thanks to founder-controlled shares, a hostile takeover seems unlikely if not impossible, but Spiegel still has a fiduciary responsibility to take any offers on the table seriously. Snap is currently an $8B company. That's like an AI seed round these days...
The better option may be for Spiegel and team to team up with some PE players to take Snap private again. The Dell playbook is what I'm imagining here. Back in 2013, the company was downtrodden when Michael Dell concocted the largest LBO ever at just under $25B. This allowed Dell to operate back under the covers of being a private company while they reworked the business.
It worked. Dell later went public again and is now valued at $260B. That's undoubtedly an unreasonable goal, but there's a lot of room between Snap's $8B market cap and Dell's $260B. Coincidentally, Snap's peak market cap five years ago was exactly half of Dell's right now: $130B. Sure, it was inflated as many such things were during the pandemic, but wow, that's quite a steep drop.
Anyway, back to the Specs themselves. In a certain light, from certain angles, they actually look pretty good. Granted I may be biased as someone who has worn thick black-rimmed glasses much of my life, but still... you could see them working. Then you see them on actual people, not in their marketing shots and they look... well, not great, Bob. Still entirely too thick and bulky.3 Like glasses that a caricature of a mobster in the 1970s might wear. Or someone who needs the thickest prescription lenses you can buy.
Again, with no puck for either battery or compute, this is not a surprise. But we're still clearly not at the point where we can ditch the puck yet. Four hours of battery life is okay... unless you actually need to wear the glasses to see.
So no, these aren't actually replacements for real glasses, which Meta Ray-Bans can be if you were so inclined. That doesn't mean they're useless, it just means it's still way too early to push ahead here with such specs for Specs.
Obviously how they do their core task, AR, will matter. But again, no one knows for sure yet because Snap isn't letting anyone know for sure yet. And again, the dev kits suggest some interesting elements, but it's early. Far more interesting may be the notion of using these as a secondary monitor for your computer, which Spiegel says is one of his core use cases. This is certainly a compelling use case for the Vision Pro too, but that device is so comically cumbersome to put on and start using that it's a non-starter for most. But a headset you simply slip on, with no cables required?...
But then it comes back to: would I pay $2,195 for that? I mean it's better than the Vision Pro's $3,499! But it's still way out of range for most consumers. Which Snap obviously has to know, I'm just not sure they had any other choice but to launch here and hope that some use case boosts them to the point where they can survive until a simpler, svelter, and cheaper version is ready. Can Snap make it long enough as a stand-alone entity to find out? The question simply must be asked, sadly.
1 Especially, it seems to me, on Threads, owned by Snap's main rival, which is interesting in a Twitter-under-Elon sort of way, though perhaps not unexpected in a self-selecting sort of way... ↩
2 I will say the virtual "try-on" element of the site is one of the best I've seen. It's so simple – though also oddly in black and white? ↩
3 I do appreciate Harry McCracken's note on the matter: "The new version is 40% lighter, has more than five times the claimed battery life, offers a wider field of view, and, though still decidedly chunky, no longer vaguely resembles a Cybertruck affixed to your face." ↩
2026-06-16 00:59:25
Today, a double-feature – a sort of one-two punch on the situation in which Anthropic currently finds themselves. How they might work their way out, and why they might not – because they might not want to...
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
💫 Satya Nadella's "Frontier Ecosystem" – Look, it's clearly easier to write a call-to-arms against frontier model domination when you don't currently control one of those leading frontier models. Though it's also awkward when you own 25%+ of a startup that does control one of those – and even more so when you're now spending billions of dollars to try to create one of those leading frontier models. That said, that doesn't mean Nadella is wrong in any of this – and many, increasingly, would hope he's right, I imagine! Beyond the models, it puts the premium on people, the true "orchestration layer" within a company that makes it what it is – not just an automated system. Yet questions remain about how many people are actually needed to build such companies versus the status quo – and what exactly their jobs will entail. The other elephant in Nadella's room here is that Microsoft obviously wants to be the platform on which this future is built. It's not a bad pitch, just completely conflicted, and a bit obtuse. But that makes it seem as if Nadella actually wrote it, which is a good thing. [SN Scratchpad]
🇬🇧 The UK Bans Social Media for Kids – While I'm generally not in favor of "nanny state" moves, I think overall this is the right, tough call. To me, it's less about taking something away from kids – which, they'll figure out a way to access anyway, as I would have when I was that age – and more about the signal it sends. And not even necessarily to the tech companies, more just to society. This ban, if implemented well – admittedly a big "if" – will act to switch the norm from all kids needing to be on social media to be "normal" to the opposite. It will hopefully relieve that pressure – performative and otherwise. I am torn about roping YouTube into this – on one hand, I get it given its scale and social dynamics, but on the other, for all the crap, it is also a wealth of interesting and useful content (not to mention entertainment, of course). I guess not banning YouTube Kids, is an okay work-around (though they'll probably need to re-brand it?), but still... I'm also really not sure about the gaming element of this. Again, I get it, but this slope is already awfully slippery. AI chatbots will have to be included at some point, right? This isn't the first such ban and won't be the last, but it happens to be where I live, raising young children so... we'll see how this goes. The "Big Techbacco" trend continues... [Reuters]
🦊 Fox Gets Their Own Streaming Box – The $22B deal for Roku will have all kinds of ramifications. While it is the most popular streaming box, the company actually makes most of its money from its ad businesses, which includes their streaming service. And Fox already has another one of those in Tubi (which they say they're not merging). Meanwhile, the "Switzerland" nature of the company – which, many forget, actually started as a skunkworks project inside Netflix way back when – has allowed their boxes to flourish. (Well that and the fact that they're cheap and easy-to-use – even as they've gotten increasingly spammy with ads in the UI.) If they're no longer Switzerland, will it change the way other competitors view them? Wall Street clearly hates this deal, with Fox's stock down over 15% today. But it's probably a smart deal if they can maintain the status quo, which is not certain. Beyond the FAST services, their "Howdy" low-price streaming service is intriguing too. Let's also remember that at the height of the pandemic streaming boom, Roku had a market cap of $65B. [WSJ 🔒]
🍿 Steven Spielberg: The Return – The past few weeks have been all about the youth movement, largely driven by YouTube, happening in real time at the box office. But this past weekend, Steven Spielberg came roaring back to life – incredibly, the man who created the summer blockbuster with Jaws hasn't had one in 24 years! The 79-year-old director learned some new tricks – TikTok, viral stunts, etc – but it was the olds who ultimately saved the Disclosure Day: 59% of the audience for the $44M opening were over 34 (which yes, qualifies as "old" for moviegoing). There's still a ways to go for profitability, as the movie cost just under $200M to make and market – it will need to make around $400M to break-even at the box office, so let's see how the second weekend holds – sadly, as expected, Masters of the Universe plunged almost 70% in its second weekend. Somehow, Obsession, in its 5th weekend, stayed at #2, which marks four straight weekends which were bigger than its actual opening. Wild. [NYT]
"He simply did not want to be conflated with Mark Zuckerberg anymore, that he has his problems with the guy. He doesn’t like kids coming up to him in airports with business cards that say 'I'm CEO, bitch' for him to sign."
– Aaron Sorkin on why Jesse Eisenberg didn't want to reprise his role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning, the sequel (at least spiritually) to the 2010 film he wrote, The Social Network.
I had been wondering why he passed – Sorkin noted that he tried for three straight days to get him to do it. Fair enough. And Jeremy Strong's vocal performance as Zuck seems like it will be one for the ages, even if, oddly Jeremy Allen White, who plays journalist Jeff Horwitz, actually looks more like Zuck.
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• SpaceX's Colossal Data Center Problem
• Inside Meta's "Gulag"