• Vibe coding platform Base44 launches own model as AI startups seek defensibility• Gemini’s personalized AI image generation is now free for US users• Anthropic and Gov. Newsom forge deal allowing California government to use Claude at half price• South Korean tech giants commit over $550B to ease ‘RAMageddon’• Arena, the AI leaderboard everyone uses, is now a $100M business• Cursor now has a mobile app for guiding your coding agent on the go• TIDAL cracks down on AI music by cutting off monetization• Robot hand company settles Tesla trade secret suit and announces $11M raise• Omen AI’s plan to optimize data centers is all wet• Ford rehires ‘gray beard’ engineers after AI falls short• Why Wall Street thinks US memory maker Micron is the next Nvidia• SoftBank’s CEO isn’t the only one with questions about Elon Musk’s orbital data center hype• Apple Vision Pro exec is reportedly leaving for OpenAI• The fittest founder in the room got cancer. Here’s how he used AI to fight back.• Asian AI startups launch Mythos-like models as Anthropic’s export ban drags on• Ask an AI expert: What exactly is the full stack?• Our latest Google Finance upgrades, including a new app• New research shows how AMIE, our medical AI, could help manage health conditions.• We’re strengthening our presence in Alabama through new investments and community support.• Our new community investments in Virginia support local jobs and expand energy affordability.• The latest AI news we announced in May 2026• 5 ways Google Search can level up your thrift and vintage shopping• How we used Gemini to build Google I/O 2026• Take our I/O 2026 quiz, vibe coded in Google AI Studio.• 9 demos of Gemini Omni and Gemini 3.5 in action• Check out real-life AI prototypes from the Futures Lab.• Catch up on 12 major I/O 2026 moments• Catch up on the Dialogues stage at Google I/O 2026.• We’re announcing new community investments in Missouri.• 100 things we announced at I/O 2026• Artificial intelligence and Engels’ Pause - Financial Times• Research at Middlebury College reveals nuanced story about artificial intelligence use - VTDigger• A.I. ‘Employees’ Might Disrupt Work in Unexpected Ways - The New York Times• Ford rehires human engineers after AI fails to match quality checks - BBC• Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly - The Independent• Ford AI hiccups push it to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors - Orange County Register• 3 Artificial Intelligence Stocks You Can Buy and Hold for the Next Decade - Yahoo Finance• Tidal AI Policy - TIDAL• Cheaper AI is better: Soaring bills are reshaping how businesses choose models - Reuters• Governor Newsom announces a first-of-its-kind partnership, providing Anthropic tools to state agencies and improving services for Californians - California State Portal | CA.gov• Samsung and SK Hynix announce a joint $518 billion investment in artificial intelligence - Fast Company• It's been 25 years since 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence', and we think this was Spielberg at the top of his sci-fi game - Space• Virtual outreach event on FSB sound practices for financial institutions’ responsible adoption of artificial intelligence - Financial Stability Board• Artificial Intelligence ECG Model Identifies Patients at Higher Risk for Sudden Cardiac Death - Patient Care Online• Police use of artificial intelligence grows as rules lag behind - Civic Media• Mapping Europe’s AI Workforce Opportunity• HP Inc. launches Frontier strategic partnership with OpenAI• Previewing GPT-5.6 Sol: a next-generation model• How agents are transforming work• OpenAI and Broadcom unveil LLM-optimized inference chip• Helping build shared standards for advanced AI• How GPT-5 helped immunologist Derya Unutmaz solve a 3-year-old mystery• How Omio is building the future of conversational travel• Daybreak: Tools for securing every organization in the world• Patch the Planet: a Daybreak initiative to support open source maintainers• Codex-maxxing for long-running work• Samsung Electronics brings ChatGPT and Codex to employees• New usage analytics and updated spend controls for enterprises• Improving health intelligence in ChatGPT• Using AI to help physicians diagnose rare genetic diseases affecting children• The Gemini app is bringing personalized image creation to more users.• Gemini can now take notes in Google Meet for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.• Here's how Gemini can help you avoid jetlag.• Try these 3 Google AI tools to help find your next job.• 5 ways Google parents are using Gemini• 5 ways to learn with study notebooks in the Gemini app• Introducing computer use in Gemini 3.5 Flash• Powering the world’s first AI arts museum• June Pixel Drop: New features for creators, Gemini upgrades and more• Save time and grow your business with new Gemini tools• Fluid, natural voice translation with Gemini 3.5 Live Translate• 4 ways soccer fans can catch every moment of the tournament• The latest AI news we announced in May 2026• How we used Gemini to build Google I/O 2026• 9 demos of Gemini Omni and Gemini 3.5 in action• Google just redesigned the search box for the first time in 25 years — here’s why it matters more than you think.• Railway secures $100 million to challenge AWS with AI-native cloud infrastructure• Claude Code costs up to $200 a month. Goose does the same thing for free.• Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scale AI customer interviews• Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battles Microsoft and Google in workplace AI• Anthropic launches Cowork, a Claude Desktop agent that works in your files — no coding required• Nous Research's NousCoder-14B is an open-source coding model landing right in the Claude Code moment• Best Universities To Study AI in 2026• 10 top women in AI in 2026• Pope Leo XIV Declares AI a Threat to Human Dignity and Workers’ Rights• ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified• AI May Soon Help You Understand What Your Pet Is Trying to Say• Netflix Adds ChatGPT-Powered AI to Stop You From Scrolling Forever• Murder Victim Speaks from the Grave in Courtroom Through AI• China Unveils World’s First AI Hospital: 14 Virtual Doctors Ready to Treat Thousands Daily• Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night• Therapists Too Expensive? Why Thousands of Women Are Spilling Their Deepest Secrets to ChatGPT• How to improve AI agent performance• How to optimize your vibe coding spend• 8 AI agent use cases and examples in the workplace• What is agentic AI? And how you can start using it• Companies spend six figures on AI—a third of employees don't know it costs anything at all• Code by Zapier: Add custom code to your workflows• Zapier SDK: Connect your code files to thousands of actions• The 8 best AI presentation makers in 2026• The 5 best AI app builders in 2026• The 8 best AI image generators in 2026• The 9 best AI voice generators• What is AI agent orchestration?• The 5 best online whiteboards in 2026• The best CRM software in 2026• The best sales forecasting software in 2026
Vibe coding platform Base44 launches own model as AI startups seek defensibility
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Vibe coding platform Base44 launches own model as AI startups seek defensibility

Wix-owned vibe coding platform Base44 has started rolling out its own AI model — with hopes that it will eventually outperform frontier models.

Gemini’s personalized AI image generation is now free for US users
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Gemini’s personalized AI image generation is now free for US users

Google is expanding Gemini’s personalized AI image generation to eligible free users in the U.S., allowing the chatbot to create images based on your interests and data from connected Google apps.

Take our I/O 2026 quiz, vibe coded in Google AI Studio.
AI

Take our I/O 2026 quiz, vibe coded in Google AI Studio.

We used Google AI Studio to vibe code a quiz about our top I/O 2026 announcements.

Improving health intelligence in ChatGPT
OpenAI News

Improving health intelligence in ChatGPT

Learn how GPT-5.5 Instant improves ChatGPT’s health and wellness responses with stronger reasoning, better context, clearer communication, and physician-informed evaluations.

Artificial Intelligence ECG Model Identifies Patients at Higher Risk for Sudden Cardiac Death - Patient Care Online
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Artificial Intelligence ECG Model Identifies Patients at Higher Risk for Sudden Cardiac Death - Patient Care Online

Artificial Intelligence ECG Model Identifies Patients at Higher Risk for Sudden Cardiac Death  Patient Care Online

Ford rehires ‘gray beard’ engineers after AI falls short
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Ford rehires ‘gray beard’ engineers after AI falls short

"Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence ... that would produce a high-quality product.”

Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly - The Independent
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly - The Independent

Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly  The Independent

3 Artificial Intelligence Stocks You Can Buy and Hold for the Next Decade - Yahoo Finance
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

3 Artificial Intelligence Stocks You Can Buy and Hold for the Next Decade - Yahoo Finance

3 Artificial Intelligence Stocks You Can Buy and Hold for the Next Decade  Yahoo Finance

New research shows how AMIE, our medical AI, could help manage health conditions.
AI

New research shows how AMIE, our medical AI, could help manage health conditions.

Research in “Nature” shows our conversational AI system matches primary care physicians in complex disease management.

The fittest founder in the room got cancer. Here’s how he used AI to fight back.
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

The fittest founder in the room got cancer. Here’s how he used AI to fight back.

When confronted with cancer, Conno Christou fed everything tied to his regime — blood results, scan data, wearable output, journal entries — into Claude.

Police use of artificial intelligence grows as rules lag behind - Civic Media
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Police use of artificial intelligence grows as rules lag behind - Civic Media

Police use of artificial intelligence grows as rules lag behind  Civic Media

Why Wall Street thinks US memory maker Micron is the next Nvidia
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Why Wall Street thinks US memory maker Micron is the next Nvidia

Eager to find more public AI-related companies that may do as well as Nvidia, Wall Street investors think they've found a winner with Micron.

Ask an AI expert: What exactly is the full stack?
AI

Ask an AI expert: What exactly is the full stack?

A Google expert explains what it means to take a full-stack approach to AI and why it’s been the foundation of our AI work for so long.

Our latest Google Finance upgrades, including a new app
AI

Our latest Google Finance upgrades, including a new app

The new Google Finance is coming out of beta and launching a new Android app.

Omen AI’s plan to optimize data centers is all wet
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Omen AI’s plan to optimize data centers is all wet

Omen AI raised a $31 million Series A to monitor chip coolant and stop bacterial outbreaks in data centers.

Ford AI hiccups push it to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors - Orange County Register
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Ford AI hiccups push it to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors - Orange County Register

Ford AI hiccups push it to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors  Orange County Register

Catch up on the Dialogues stage at Google I/O 2026.
AI

Catch up on the Dialogues stage at Google I/O 2026.

A recap of the 2026 I/O Dialogues, where leaders discuss the future of AI, quantum computing, robotics and creativity.

Artificial intelligence and Engels’ Pause - Financial Times
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Artificial intelligence and Engels’ Pause - Financial Times

Artificial intelligence and Engels’ Pause  Financial Times

Cheaper AI is better: Soaring bills are reshaping how businesses choose models - Reuters
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Cheaper AI is better: Soaring bills are reshaping how businesses choose models - Reuters

Cheaper AI is better: Soaring bills are reshaping how businesses choose models  Reuters

Our new community investments in Virginia support local jobs and expand energy affordability.
AI

Our new community investments in Virginia support local jobs and expand energy affordability.

We’re helping build the state’s next-generation workforce and investing in energy programs.

Asian AI startups launch Mythos-like  models as Anthropic’s export ban drags on
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Asian AI startups launch Mythos-like models as Anthropic’s export ban drags on

New models are launching in Asia that promise Mythos-like capabilities without fear of an export ban. U.S. AI labs may never recover this enormous market.

Apple Vision Pro exec is reportedly leaving for OpenAI
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Apple Vision Pro exec is reportedly leaving for OpenAI

Paul Meade, the Apple vice president in charge of the Vision Pro headset, is reportedly leaving the company to join OpenAI’s hardware team.

A.I. ‘Employees’ Might Disrupt Work in Unexpected Ways - The New York Times
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

A.I. ‘Employees’ Might Disrupt Work in Unexpected Ways - The New York Times

A.I. ‘Employees’ Might Disrupt Work in Unexpected Ways  The New York Times

The 5 best AI app builders in 2026
The Zapier Blog

The 5 best AI app builders in 2026

Even using no-code, building a new app can take a big chunk of your time. Setting up data sources requires smart planning and foresight. Building an intuitive user interface takes multiple tries until you find the perfect layout. And tying it all together with bug-free app logic demands attention to detail and many rounds of testing. AI helps in two ways here. The first is by turning your prompt into a first-draft app, speeding up setup. The other is by building solutions with code and placing t

4 ways soccer fans can catch every moment of the tournament
Gemini

4 ways soccer fans can catch every moment of the tournament

Google tools — like Maps, Gemini and AI Mode in Search — can help guide you from the first whistle to the final goal.

9 demos of Gemini Omni and Gemini 3.5 in action
AI

9 demos of Gemini Omni and Gemini 3.5 in action

Watch 9 videos showing the capabilities of Gemini Omni and Gemini 3.5, announced at Google I/O 2026.

Ford rehires human engineers after AI fails to match quality checks - BBC
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Ford rehires human engineers after AI fails to match quality checks - BBC

Ford rehires human engineers after AI fails to match quality checks  BBC

We’re announcing new community investments in Missouri.
AI

We’re announcing new community investments in Missouri.

We’re helping build the state’s next-generation workforce and investing in energy programs.

Anthropic and Gov. Newsom forge deal allowing California government to use Claude at half price
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Anthropic and Gov. Newsom forge deal allowing California government to use Claude at half price

As Anthropic forges a closer relationship with the state of California, the federal government has made an enemy out of the OpenAI rival.

How agents are transforming work
OpenAI News

How agents are transforming work

A new OpenAI research paper shows how AI agents are transforming work, enabling longer, more complex tasks and expanding productivity across roles.

Here's how Gemini can help you avoid jetlag.
Gemini

Here's how Gemini can help you avoid jetlag.

If you’ve got a faraway trip coming up, the Gemini app can help you avoid jetlag so you can make the most of your visit.Once you’ve given Gemini permission to access you…

5 ways to learn with study notebooks in the Gemini app
Gemini

5 ways to learn with study notebooks in the Gemini app

Study notebooks is a new space in the Gemini app that serves as an interactive learning tool tailored to any student's goals.

New usage analytics and updated spend controls for enterprises
OpenAI News

New usage analytics and updated spend controls for enterprises

OpenAI introduces new spend controls and usage analytics for ChatGPT Enterprise, helping organizations manage costs and scale AI with confidence.

Code by Zapier: Add custom code to your workflows
The Zapier Blog

Code by Zapier: Add custom code to your workflows

With Zapier, you can connect thousands of apps inside a Zap (what we call an automated workflow). Add forms, tables, and the ability to reach your data from any AI tool to the mix, and there's a lot you can do. But sometimes you need more. Maybe Zapier's existing actions or triggers can't quite get you where you need to go. Maybe you're pulling information from App A, but it's not in the right format for App B. Or maybe you have something more involved in mind, like looping through records from

The 9 best AI voice generators
The Zapier Blog

The 9 best AI voice generators

Recording a voiceover is challenging enough. You go through way too many takes to get what you want. You don't have enough time to rehearse and hit your tone and intention targets. You read endless audio editing software guides to make sure your voice sounds good. And even if you nail all of these things, if you don't have access to a studio, your perfect performance will be riddled with background noise. So should you give up and hire a voice actor? Not yet: AI voice generators can deliver impr

Cursor now has a mobile app for guiding your coding agent on the go
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Cursor now has a mobile app for guiding your coding agent on the go

Cursor has launched a new mobile app for remote oversight over coding agents.

Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night
DailyAI

Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night

Another year, another viral deepfake of Katy Perry at the Met Gala and once again, she wasn’t even there. Photos showing the pop star in a sleek black designer gown circulated widely on social media during Monday night’s event, matching the “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” theme. But the images were AI-generated. Perry quickly clarified she was not at the Met; she was on tour. Perry’s reaction “Couldn’t make it to the MET, I’m on The Lifetimes Tour (see you in Houston tomorrow IRL),” she posted to Instagram alongside the fake images. She added a jab at AI confusion: “P.s. this The post Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night appeared first on DailyAI.

Virtual outreach event on FSB sound practices for financial institutions’ responsible adoption of artificial intelligence - Financial Stability Board
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Virtual outreach event on FSB sound practices for financial institutions’ responsible adoption of artificial intelligence - Financial Stability Board

Virtual outreach event on FSB sound practices for financial institutions’ responsible adoption of artificial intelligence  Financial Stability Board

Check out real-life AI prototypes from the Futures Lab.
AI

Check out real-life AI prototypes from the Futures Lab.

University of Waterloo students develop AI prototypes like sign language tutors to reshape the future of education and work.

Previewing GPT-5.6 Sol: a next-generation model
OpenAI News

Previewing GPT-5.6 Sol: a next-generation model

OpenAI previews GPT-5.6 Sol, a next-generation model with stronger capabilities in coding, science, and cybersecurity, paired with its most advanced safety stack.

OpenAI and Broadcom unveil LLM-optimized inference chip
OpenAI News

OpenAI and Broadcom unveil LLM-optimized inference chip

OpenAI and Broadcom introduce Jalapeño, a custom AI chip built for LLM inference to improve performance, efficiency, and scale across AI systems.

The 5 best online whiteboards in 2026
The Zapier Blog

The 5 best online whiteboards in 2026

Brainstorming works better visually. Sometimes that means a physical whiteboard full of sticky notes—it works. But if your team is spread between multiple offices, or works remotely, you need a virtual whiteboard.  These applications take what's great about a physical whiteboard—the freewheeling, visual collaboration—and bring it to your computer screen. You can draw, drag virtual sticky notes around, and even embed images or entire documents.  For the past few years, I've tested dozens of onlin

AI May Soon Help You Understand What Your Pet Is Trying to Say
DailyAI

AI May Soon Help You Understand What Your Pet Is Trying to Say

Chinese tech powerhouse Baidu has filed a patent for a system that could use AI to decode animal sounds and behaviour then translate those signals into human language. For the millions of pet owners wondering what their animals are thinking, this could be the first real step toward bridging the communication gap between humans and animals. The tech Baidu’s system would collect animal vocalizations, body movements, and biological signals. It would merge that data and feed it into an AI model trained to identify emotional states. These emotional states could then be rendered in human language to boost “cross-species communication”. The post AI May Soon Help You Understand What Your Pet Is Trying to Say appeared first on DailyAI.

The Gemini app is bringing personalized image creation to more users.
Gemini

The Gemini app is bringing personalized image creation to more users.

Personal Intelligence makes the Gemini app feel tailored to you. With your permission, it pulls from Google tools like Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube and Search to provid…

SoftBank’s CEO isn’t the only one with questions about Elon Musk’s orbital data center hype
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

SoftBank’s CEO isn’t the only one with questions about Elon Musk’s orbital data center hype

Not everyone is buying Elon Musk’s vision for orbital data centers.

5 ways Google Search can level up your thrift and vintage shopping
AI

5 ways Google Search can level up your thrift and vintage shopping

Uncover second-hand scores with AI tools in Google Search and Shopping.

Mapping Europe’s AI Workforce Opportunity
OpenAI News

Mapping Europe’s AI Workforce Opportunity

A new OpenAI report maps how AI could reshape jobs across the EU, highlighting which occupations may face automation, growth, or workflow changes.

ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified
DailyAI

ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified

ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot from OpenAI, is unintentionally leading users into full-blown spiritual delusions, and families are sounding the alarm. On Reddit’s r/ChatGPT forum, a chilling thread titled “ChatGPT induced psychosis” is gaining traction. Users are reporting a disturbing pattern: their loved ones are convinced that ChatGPT is a divine being, a spiritual guru, or even a portal to God. Rolling Stone journalist Miles Klee spoke directly with affected individuals. One woman shared how her partner became obsessed after ChatGPT gave him cosmic nicknames like “spiral starchild” and claimed he was on a divine mission. He ultimately told her The post ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified appeared first on DailyAI.

Helping build shared standards for advanced AI
OpenAI News

Helping build shared standards for advanced AI

OpenAI helps build shared standards for advanced AI, supporting evaluation frameworks, safety practices, and global cooperation through the Appia Foundation.

Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scale AI customer interviews
AI | VentureBeat

Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scale AI customer interviews

Alfred Wahlforss was running out of options. His startup, Listen Labs, needed to hire over 100 engineers, but competing against Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million offers seemed impossible. So he spent $5,000 — a fifth of his marketing budget — on a billboard in San Francisco displaying what looked like gibberish: five strings of random numbers. The numbers were actually AI tokens. Decoded, they led to a coding challenge: build an algorithm to act as a digital bouncer at Berghain, the Berlin nightclub famous for rejecting nearly everyone at the door. Within days, thousands attempted the puzzle. 430 cracked it. Some got hired. The winner flew to Berlin, all expenses paid. That unconventional approach has now attracted $69 million in Series B funding, led by Ribbit Capital with participation from Evantic and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Conviction, and Pear VC. The round values Listen Labs at $500 million and brings its total capital to $100 million. In nine months since launch, the company has grown annualized revenue by 15x to eight figures and conducted over one million AI-powered interviews. "When you obsess over customers, everything else follows," Wahlforss said in an interview with VentureBeat. "Teams that use Listen bring the customer into every decision, from marketing to product, and when the customer is delighted, everyone is." Why traditional market research is broken, and what Listen Labs is building to fix it Listen's AI researcher finds participants, conducts in-depth interviews, and delivers actionable insights in hours, not weeks. The platform replaces the traditional choice between quantitative surveys — which provide statistical precision but miss nuance—and qualitative interviews, which deliver depth but cannot scale. Wahlforss explained the limitation of existing approaches: "Essentially surveys give you false precision because people end up answering the same question... You can't get the outliers. People are actually not honest on surveys." The alternative, one-on-one human interviews, "gives you a lot of depth. You can ask follow up questions. You can kind of double check if they actually know what they're talking about. And the problem is you can't scale that." The platform works in four steps: users create a study with AI assistance, Listen recruits participants from its global network of 30 million people, an AI moderator conducts in-depth interviews with follow-up questions, and results are packaged into executive-ready reports including key themes, highlight reels, and slide decks. What distinguishes Listen's approach is its use of open-ended video conversations rather than multiple-choice forms. "In a survey, you can kind of guess what you should answer, and you have four options," Wahlforss said. "Oh, they probably want me to buy high income. Let me click on that button versus an open ended response. It just generates much more honesty." The dirty secret of the $140 billion market research industry: rampant fraud Listen finds and qualifies the right participants in its global network of 30 million people. But building that panel required confronting what Wahlforss called "one of the most shocking things that we've learned when we entered this industry"—rampant fraud. "Essentially, there's a financial transaction involved, which means there will be bad players," he explained. "We actually had some of the largest companies, some of them have billions in revenue, send us people who claim to be kind of enterprise buyers to our platform and our system immediately detected, like, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud." The company built what it calls a "quality guard" that cross-references LinkedIn profiles with video responses to verify identity, checks consistency across how participants answer questions, and flags suspicious patterns. The result, according to Wahlforss: "People talk three times more. They're much more honest when they talk about sensitive topics like politics and mental health." Emeritus, an online education company that uses Listen, reported that approximately 20% of survey responses previously fell into the fraudulent or low-quality category. With Listen, they reduced this to almost zero. "We did not have to replace any responses because of fraud or gibberish information," said Gabrielli Tiburi, Assistant Manager of Customer Insights at Emeritus. How Microsoft, Sweetgreen, and Chubbies are using AI interviews to build better products The speed advantage has proven central to Listen's pitch. Traditional customer research at Microsoft could take four to six weeks to generate insights. "By the time we get to them, either the decision has been made or we lose out on the opportunity to actually influence it," said Romani Patel, Senior Research Manager at Microsoft. With Listen, Microsoft can now get insights in days, and in many cases, within hours. The platform has already powered several high-profile initiatives. Microsoft used Listen Labs to collect global customer stories for its 50th anniversary celebration. "We wanted users to share how Copilot is empowering them to bring their best self forward," Patel said, "and we were able to collect those user video stories within a day." Traditionally, that kind of work would have taken six to eight weeks. Simple Modern, an Oklahoma-based drinkware company, used Listen to test a new product concept. The process took about an hour to write questions, an hour to launch the study, and 2.5 hours to receive feedback from 120 people across the country. "We went from 'Should we even have this product?' to 'How should we launch it?'" said Chris Hoyle, the company's Chief Marketing Officer. Chubbies, the shorts brand, achieved a 24x increase in youth research participation—growing from 5 to 120 participants — by using Listen to overcome the scheduling challenges of traditional focus groups with children. "There's school, sports, dinner, and homework," explained Lauren Neville, Director of Insights and Innovation. "I had to find a way to hear from them that fit into their schedules." The company also discovered product issues through AI interviews that might have gone undetected otherwise. Wahlforss described how the AI "through conversations, realized there were like issues with the the kids short line, and decided to, like, interview hundreds of kids. And I understand that there were issues in the liner of the shorts and that they were, like, scratchy, quote, unquote, according to the people interviewed." The redesigned product became "a blockbuster hit." The Jevons paradox explains why cheaper research creates more demand, not less Listen Labs is entering a massive but fragmented market. Wahlforss cited research from Andreessen Horowitz estimating the market research industry at roughly $140 billion annually, populated by legacy players — some with more than a billion dollars in revenue — that he believes are vulnerable to disruption. "There are very much existing budget lines that we are replacing," Wahlforss said. "Why we're replacing them is that one, they're super costly. Two, they're kind of stuck in this old paradigm of choosing between a survey or interview, and they also take months to work with." But the more intriguing dynamic may be that AI-powered research doesn't just replace existing spending — it creates new demand. Wahlforss invoked the Jevons paradox, an economic principle that occurs when technological advancements make a resource more efficient to use, but increased efficiency leads to increased overall consumption rather than decreased consumption. "What I've noticed is that as something gets cheaper, you don't need less of it. You want more of it," Wahlforss explained. "There's infinite demand for customer understanding. So the researchers on the team can do an order of magnitude more research, and also other people who weren't researchers before can now do that as part of their job." Inside the elite engineering team that built Listen Labs before they had a working toilet Listen Labs traces its origins to a consumer app that Wahlforss and his co-founder built after meeting at Harvard. "We built this consumer app that got 20,000 downloads in one day," Wahlforss recalled. "We had all these users, and we were thinking like, okay, what can we do to get to know them better? And we built this prototype of what Listen is today." The founding team brings an unusual pedigree. Wahlforss's co-founder "was the national champion in competitive programming in Germany, and he worked at Tesla Autopilot." The company claims that 30% of its engineering team are medalists from the International Olympiad in Informatics — the same competition that produced the founders of Cognition, the AI coding startup. The Berghain billboard stunt generated approximately 5 million views across social media, according to Wahlforss. It reflected the intensity of the talent war in the Bay Area. "We had to do these things because some of our, like early employees, joined the company before we had a working toilet," he said. "But now we fixed that situation." The company grew from 5 to 40 employees in 2024 and plans to reach 150 this year. It hires engineers for non-engineering roles across marketing, growth, and operations — a bet that in the AI era, technical fluency matters everywhere. Synthetic customers and automated decisions: what Listen Labs is building next Wahlforss outlined an ambitious product roadmap that pushes into more speculative territory. The company is building "the ability to simulate your customers, so you can take all of those interviews we've done, and then extrapolate based on that and create synthetic users or simulated user voices." Beyond simulation, Listen aims to enable automated action based on research findings. "Can you not just make recommendations, but also create spawn agents to either change things in code or some customer churns? Can you give them a discount and try to bring them back?" Wahlforss acknowledged the ethical implications. "Obviously, as you said, there's kind of ethical concerns there. Of like, automated decision making overall can be bad, but we will have considerable guardrails to make sure that the companies are always in the loop." The company already handles sensitive data with care. "We don't train on any of the data," Wahlforss said. "We will also scrub any sensitive PII automatically so the model can detect that. And there are times when, for example, you work with investors, where if you accidentally mention something that could be material, non public information, the AI can actually detect that and remove any information like that." How AI could reshape the future of product development Perhaps the most provocative implication of Listen's model is how it could reshape product development itself. Wahlforss described a customer — an Australian startup — that has adopted what amounts to a continuous feedback loop. "They're based in Australia, so they're coding during the day, and then in their night, they're releasing a Listen study with an American audience. Listen validates whatever they built during the day, and they get feedback on that. They can then plug that feedback directly into coding tools like Claude Code and iterate." The vision extends Y Combinator's famous dictum — "write code, talk to users" — into an automated cycle. "Write code is now getting automated. And I think like talk to users will be as well, and you'll have this kind of infinite loop where you can start to ship this truly amazing product, almost kind of autonomously." Whether that vision materializes depends on factors beyond Listen's control — the continued improvement of AI models, enterprise willingness to trust automated research, and whether speed truly correlates with better products. A 2024 MIT study found that 95% of AI pilots fail to move into production, a statistic Wahlforss cited as the reason he emphasizes quality over demos. "I'm constantly have to emphasize like, let's make sure the quality is there and the details are right," he said. But the company's growth suggests appetite for the experiment. Microsoft's Patel said Listen has "removed the drudgery of research and brought the fun and joy back into my work." Chubbies is now pushing its founder to give everyone in the company a login. Sling Money, a stablecoin payments startup, can create a survey in ten minutes and receive results the same day. "It's a total game changer," said Ali Romero, Sling Money's marketing manager. Wahlforss has a different phrase for what he's building. When asked about the tension between speed and rigor — the long-held belief that moving fast means cutting corners — he cited Nat Friedman, the former GitHub CEO and Listen investor, who keeps a list of one-liners on his website. One of them: "Slow is fake." It's an aggressive claim for an industry built on methodological caution. But Listen Labs is betting that in the AI era, the companies that listen fastest will be the ones that win. The only question is whether customers will talk back.