The AI Why with Liam Lawson

This week on AI News in 5: OpenAI kills Sora just six months after launch — blindsiding Disney and losing a billion-dollar deal. Amazon drops $50 billion on OpenAI, putting Microsoft on the warpath. Apple dumps OpenAI and partners with Google to rebuild Siri. OpenClaw becomes the fastest-growing open-source project in history. And a hacker infects a popular AI tool downloaded 3.4 million times a d...

In this episode, Brian Alvey, CTO of WordPress VIP (Automattic's enterprise platform), reveals how the platform powering NASA, CBS, NBCUniversal, Rolling Stone, Samsung, and the White House is integrating AI into enterprise publishing at massive scale. Brian shares how he's built over 24 content management platforms throughout his career — and why the current AI moment is the most transformative s...

Apple confirms Google Gemini will power the new Siri — dropping OpenAI as the default on a billion devices. GPT-5.4 Thinking becomes the first AI to beat the human baseline at navigating a computer. Yann LeCun raises $1.03B in the largest seed round in European history to build a new kind of AI. Robotics companies pull in $1.2B in a single week. And the U.S. Department of Energy puts $293M behind...

In this episode, Michael J. Domanic, VP and Head of AI at UserTesting, reveals how he drove 70%+ weekly AI adoption across the entire company — turning UserTesting into one of the most AI-mature enterprises in the market. Michael shares why most enterprise AI rollouts fail, and the exact playbook he used to get hundreds of employees building custom GPTs and integrating AI into their daily workflow...

This week: OpenAI's Pentagon deal sparked the #QuitGPT movement with 2.5 million supporters, Anthropic got labeled a supply-chain risk by the DOD, AI-driven layoffs hit Oracle and Block hard, NVIDIA teased its biggest GTC yet, and Apple revealed a $599 AI laptop. Key Topics Covered OpenAI's classified Pentagon deal sparks #QuitGPT revolt with 2.5M supporters and 295% surge in ChatGPT uninstalls Pe...

How Coursera's VP of Enterprise Is Reskilling 7,000+ Organizations with AI — Anthony Salcito on the 234% GenAI Enrollment Surge, Verified Skills Paths, and the Human Side of AI Transformation Anthony Salcito is the Vice President of Enterprise at Coursera, where he leads a $255.3 million enterprise business partnering with over 7,000 organizations globally. In this episode, Anthony breaks down why...

Stripe Solves AI Billing, Nvidia's $30B OpenAI Exit, GPT 5.4 Launches with Computer Use, and OpenAI's Safety Reckoning This week on AI News in 5 by The AI Report, Liam Lawson breaks down four major stories reshaping the AI industry. From Stripe's new billing infrastructure for AI companies to Nvidia's $30 billion investment in OpenAI that may be its last, GPT 5.4 beating 83% of industry profession...

In this episode, Christian Lund, Co-Founder of Templafy, reveals how the company built an AI-powered instruction and orchestration layer that helps over 800 enterprise customers — including KPMG, IKEA, and BDO — generate millions of compliant, on-brand business documents 100x faster. Christian shares why the real defensibility in AI isn't the model itself, but the mid-layer that tells the model ex...

OpenAI just raised $110 billion — the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is threatening to blacklist Anthropic over AI safety limits. This is the biggest week in AI news — here's everything you need to know. In this episode of The AI Report Podcast, we break down the 5 biggest AI stories from the week of February 23–27, 2026:🏛️ Pentagon vs. Anthropic — Defense...

Upscaile Partnered with Stanford to Teach a 90-Minute AI for Creativity Masterclass — From Prompting Fundamentals to Full AI Short Film ProductionIn this full Stanford class recording, Arturo Ferreira walks students through the complete creative AI workflow — from foundational prompting techniques to producing a short sci-fi film using only AI tools. The session covers everything from how tokeniza...

In this episode, Peter Swartz, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Altana, reveals how the company's AI-powered supply chain knowledge graph has helped stop hundreds of millions of dollars in forced labor goods from crossing borders and contributed to some of the largest counter-narcotics seizures in investigators' careers. Peter shares the real-world impact Altana is making across both the pu...

📢 This Week in AI: ChatGPT Ads, Data Center Freezes & Lunar FactoriesAI isn’t slowing down—it’s changing how we search, build infrastructure, and even think about space. This week: OpenAI switches on ads inside ChatGPT, U.S. states move to freeze new AI data centers, Elon Musk pitches a lunar AI satellite factory, China turns to AI to hunt corruption, and Anthropic raises a massive $30 billion wa...

📢 Trillion-Dollar Mergers, Software Selloffs & the UK's First AI Town Anthropic drops Opus 4.6 and triggers a stock selloff, Microsoft's Copilot faces a user crisis, Musk merges SpaceX with xAI in a $1.25 trillion deal, and the UK government turns Barnsley into a tech town. 4 major AI stories in under 5 minutes. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Intro0:15 - Anthropic Launches Claude Opus 4.61:15 - Microsoft...

Louis Shulman on Building a 15-Person Newsletter Agency, Taking 300 Sales Calls in One Year, and Why Email Marketing Is the Most Overlooked Growth Channel. Louis Shulman, founder of Orbit Marketing, returns to the show to reveal how he built a newsletter agency from scratch, scaled to 15 team members, and took over 300 sales calls in a single year. In this candid conversation, Louis shares why mos...

This week in AI and tech: Google removes medical AI overviews after controversy, Anthropic launches Claude for Healthcare, Slackbot becomes a full AI agent, OpenAI signs a $10 billion deal with Cerebras, and Trump announces 25% tariffs on AI chips. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 00:30 Story #1: Google Pulls Medical AI Overviews 04:15 Story #2: Anthropic Launches Claude for Healthcare 08:45 Story #3: Sl...

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health, Amazon takes Alexa+ to the web, and Google reinvents your inbox—6 game-changing AI updates for operators in under 5 minutes. 📰 THIS WEEK'S TOP STORIES • Plaud NotePin S: New $179 AI notetaker + Mac desktop app • Amazon Alexa+: Web experience now live at Alexa.com • UMG & NVIDIA: "Responsible AI" partnership for music discovery • OpenAI ChatGPT Health: Dedicated hea...

How Eric Jorgenson Thinks 30 Years Ahead to Build Companies That Matter in the Age of AI Eric Jorgenson, CEO of Scribe Media and venture investor, reveals how thinking on a 20-30 year timeline fundamentally changes investment decisions, company building, and personal leverage in an AI-accelerated world. From investing in asteroid mining startups to understanding why most people get the AI revoluti...

How Shopify Is Building The Future of AI Commerce with Andrew McNamaraShopify's Director of Applied ML, Andrew McNamara, reveals how the new Sidekick Pulse and SimGym features are revolutionizing e-commerce for merchants of all sizes. With 15 years of experience building AI assistants—dating back to pre-Siri days—Andrew breaks down how Shopify is using "LLM as a judge" to ensure quality and why "v...

Jason Eubanks on Building Oracel: Raising $30M in 28 Hours to Disrupt the $236B Go-To-Market Tooling Market with AI-Native Sales AutomationJason Eubanks, CEO and Co-founder of Oracel, discusses how the company raised $30 million in just 28 hours—oversubscribed at $40 million—by solving a critical problem in the go-to-market industry. With a $236 billion market opportunity and only a "desert of inn...

Discover how Anton, one of the most experienced AI and machine learning experts in the industry, discusses his evolution from building matching algorithms at Bright.com to navigating today's AI landscape. With over a decade of experience in large-scale recommendation systems and data processing, Anton reveals how the fundamentals of big data and embarrassingly parallel computing shaped modern AI a...

Building Teams in the Age of AI: How Slack CMO Ryan Gavin is Reshaping the Future of Work In this episode, Ryan Gavin, Chief Marketing Officer at Slack, reveals how self-awareness in leadership and the convergence of marketing and product strategy are creating unprecedented opportunities in the agentic era. Learn why employee productivity through AI orchestration is poised to become the fastest ac...

Nick Johnston is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Business Development at Salesforce, where he leads strategic relationships with major technology companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS, Google, IBM, and Workday. In this conversation recorded during Dreamforce 2025, Nick shares how Salesforce closed 12,500 Agentforce deals and navigated the complexities of announcing major...

Try AI Pals today: http://tavus.io/pals-launch?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=theaireportIn this candid conversation with Quinn Favret, and Hassaan Raza, Co-Founders of Tavus, we dive deep into the future of human computing and how AI is learning to communicate like humans. Quinn walks us through their inspiring San Francisco office—a museum of vintage computing that fuels the...

How a Former Startup Founder (Nancy Xu) is Building the Future of AI Agents at Salesforce Agent ForceJoin us for an insightful conversation with a Salesforce Agent Force leader who previously founded Moon Hub and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford. In this episode, Nancy Xu reveals her unconventional hiring strategies, including asking candidates "what tabs are open in your Chrome brows...

#SalesforcePartner Rohit Khanna on AI Agents in Customer Service: How Smarsh Achieved 56% Deflection with Agentforce 360 Platform. Rohit Khanna, Chief Customer Officer at Smarsh, reveals how AI agents are revolutionizing customer service automation in financial services compliance. In this episode, learn how Smarsh implemented Salesforce Agentforce to achieve 56% deflection rates, 20% productivity...