autonomy
Every AI Product Got Named Spark Because Agent Started Sounding Like a Threat
In the space of one week, three companies with nothing to do with each other reached for the same word to name a piece of AI hardware or software. NVIDIA has the DGX Spark. Google has Gemini Spark. Meta has Muse Spark. There was no shared press call, no coordinated campaign, and no trademark fight.…
The Highest Score Is How Well It Runs Without You
There is a number some advisors use to price a private company before it goes to market. They call it a sellability score, and the single largest input is not revenue, not margin, and not the founder’s charisma in a room. It is the degree to which the business keeps working after the owner walks…
The Day the Machine Stopped Asking and Started Buying
Mastercard spent this week wiring rails for a customer it has never had: a piece of software that can reach for your card on its own. Decrypt’s account of Mastercard enabling AI agent payments with Coinbase and Ripple shows the plumbing running straight through crypto infrastructure, which tells you the shape of the thing. The…
The Agent Wants A Wallet
Five years ago, the question about AI was whether it could write a passable email. Today, four of the five biggest stories on my desk are about agents, meaning autonomous software that does not just answer but acts, and one of them is about giving those agents a payment rail. Not a metaphorical one. A…