AI agents battle for your texts
“An AI agent is as powerful as the information it has about you.”
Transcript
We are officially in the AI agent wars. Instinct, Muse, Victor. And I think some of these billion dollar AI companies are going to die way faster than people expect. Instinct rates hundreds of millions of dollars at a multi-billion dollar valuation. Then, meta-launch Muse. And that exposes the fundamental problem
with consumer AI agents. An AI agent is as powerful as the information it has about you. Instinct can connect to my email, calendar, and other services. But meta has something potentially much more powerful. Years of context. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger.
Who I follow, who I like, what I save, who I talk to, what I care about. They can turn on an agent and immediately have a massive distribution in context advantage. But there's another war happening, my text messages. Every agent wants to live inside the most valuable piece of digital real estate I have.
My text. It took almost two decades for email to become completely overrun with newsletters, promotions, and spam. I think agents can do that same thing within text messages in the next year. Instinct is already texting me every day. Other agents want the same access.
But my thread is precious. If you text me, you better be my friend, my family, or provide so much value I actually want you there. And this is where venture capital arrives and gets super scary in the story. We are throwing enormous amounts of money at consumer AI companies while the market is moving insanely fast.
Investors are trying to create king makers before we even know which kingdoms will exist. A startup can raise hundreds of millions of dollars at a massive valuation. And then meta Apple, Google, or OpenAI can chip a feature that changes its entire competitive position overnight.
But that doesn't mean startups can't win. It means momentum is not a moat. The Asian wars won't necessarily be won by whoever raises the most money. They'll be won by whoever already knows you best and mark my words. Some of these billion dollar AI companies are going to disappear just as quickly as they appear.
Every industry, every business model, there's a larger opportunity hiding inside of it. I'm here to help you find them. Follow me for more tech and AI news.