This week felt like a strange mix of Hollywood drama and deep tech breakthroughs. Netflix shook the industry with the biggest content acquisition in years, Anthropic pushed AI closer to becoming a true engineering partner, and Google dropped a security agent that might quietly save half the internet. Add Benedict Evans reminding us that AI is now the platform shift, not a side show, and it’s clear: we’re not just watching the future unfold, we’re running right into it. Let’s jump in.

Netflix announced it is acquiring Warner Bros Discovery’s film and TV studios, including HBO Max and Warner’s legendary content library. The deal is valued at about 82.7 billion dollars (with an equity value around 72 billion). Under the agreement, Warner will spin off its cable networks first; once that happens, Netflix will fold in studios, streaming and legacy content.

This takeover instantly gives Netflix control of some of the biggest franchises and series in entertainment, everything from Harry Potter and DC Comics superheroes to blockbuster shows like Game of Thrones, classic sitcoms and more. For viewers worldwide, this could mean major shifts in availability and access to beloved films and series.

For the industry, it is a massive consolidation that could reshape how we consume media. Netflix’s plan to keep theatrical releases alive while integrating streaming, production, and global distribution under one roof aims to combine the best of old-school Hollywood with the world of digital streaming. The effects will likely ripple across studios, streaming rivals, and how studios think about content creation and rights.

The AI company Anthropic just released Claude Opus 4.5, its most powerful AI model yet, built for serious coding, automation, and complex workflows. The model beats previous versions, and much of the competition, on coding benchmarks, excels at long-form reasoning and multi-step tasks, and now integrates smoothly with tools like Excel and Chrome.

What sets Opus 4.5 apart is not just raw power. It’s significantly cheaper than previous “front-line” models, making advanced AI more accessible to developers and teams. Early users say it’s already handling tasks that used to be near impossible for AI, from large refactors to data analysis workflows, with reliability, speed, and context awareness.

For people like us, building or managing digital projects, this marks a shift: AI goes from toy to tool. If you’ve been experimenting with agents, automation, or coding assistants or just curious about what’s next this update is one to test today. It might just reshape how we build and work.

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Google DeepMind just unveiled CodeMender, a new AI-powered agent designed to automatically detect and patch software vulnerabilities at scale. Instead of leaving security holes waiting for human eyes, CodeMender uses advanced reasoning (via Google’s Gemini models), static/dynamic analysis, fuzzing and automated tests to identify dangerous bugs, then suggests and validates fixes. Over the past six months, it already upstreamed 72 security patches to open-source projects, including some spanning millions of lines of code.

What makes CodeMender stand out is that it isn’t just reactive, scrambling to fix when something breaks, but proactive. It can rewrite existing code to remove entire classes of vulnerabilities, effectively hardening software before a threat emerges. At the same time, it runs automated checks to ensure no regressions or bugs sneak in, surfacing only high-quality patches for human review. That means developers can focus on building features instead of patching leaks.

For anyone building apps, maintaining code, or shipping products, this signals a shift. Tools like CodeMender could drastically reduce the security burden and let teams move faster without compromising safety. As codebases grow large and attackers get smarter, having an “AI security engineer” on the team may soon become standard practice.

Tech analyst Benedict Evans, publishes a twice-yearly “state of the industry” presentation that tracks the biggest shifts shaping tech. His 2025 edition, titled AI Eats the World, argues we’re now living through a new platform shift, where AI isn’t just a trend, but a force quietly rewriting how businesses, software and workflows are structured.

Evans warns that while large language models (LLMs) get most of the hype, the real battleground in the near future will be adoption, integration and reliability. The raw model race, speed, scale, benchmarks, matters less than the companies that figure out how to embed AI into products, organizational workflows and everyday tools. In other words: it won’t be “which AI is smartest,” but “which AI works best in the real world.”

For startups, creators and entrepreneurs, especially those building in less-served regions like ours, this signals a major opportunity. As AI shifts from demo-ready to production-ready, there will be space for tools, platforms and services that make AI practical, easy to use and trustworthy. The question isn’t “if AI will change the world,” but “who builds the tools that shape AI’s real impact.”

The E-commerce Germany Awards (EGA) is back, inviting both established players and emerging startups across the DACH e-commerce space to showcase their best solutions. First-place winners in each category walk away with promotional exposure worth around 10,000 euros, making it one of the most valuable recognition programs in the region.

Launched in 2018, the awards now attract more than 350 entries a year and engage over 80,000 professionals. Companies compete across 12 categories that reflect the industry’s shifting landscape, including Sales and Marketing, Payment and Fintech, Analytics, Global Commerce, Logistics, CX, and Omnichannel tools. After a public voting round, finalists move on to a jury of seasoned e-commerce leaders from brands like Jack Wolfskin, OMIO, C&A, camel active, KoRo, home24 and MediaMarkt.

Submissions open on December 1 and close on December 17. Entry is free, and only the top 10 finalists per category pay a 450-euro fee, which includes guaranteed promotional exposure. Winners will be announced at the gala on 17 February 2026 at Messe Berlin, right after Day 1 of the E-commerce Berlin Expo. It’s a strong opportunity for visibility, networking and showcasing innovation in one of Europe’s most competitive e-commerce markets.

Link to apply: https://ecommercegermanyawards.com

We need to move the conversation past "GenAI" as a content tool and focus on Agentic AI software that doesn't just write text but executes complex, multistep workflows autonomously. New data indicates this shift could unlock nearly $3 trillion in annual economic value in the US alone by 2030. For leaders in finance and retail, this is the "operator's" moment: the technology is finally mature enough to handle end-to-end processes like claims processing or supply chain logistics, rather than just isolated tasks. This is about building "digital coworkers," not just smarter chatbots.

There is a massive, under-discussed crisis in talent strategy: demand for AI fluency, the ability to manage and verify AI agents, has grown sevenfold in just two years. As a leader who has scaled teams across Europe, I can tell you that hiring for Python skills is no longer enough. The winning organizations in 2026 will be those that train their "human-in-the-loop" workforce to act as orchestrators who guide agents, rather than executors of routine work. We need to highlight that soft skills like leadership and empathy are becoming more valuable, not less, as they are the hardest to automate.

The biggest trap right now is using AI to make a bad process slightly faster. The data shows that 60% of the potential value of AI comes from fundamentally reimagining sector-specific workflows, like clinical trials in pharma or loan underwriting in banking, rather than just automating admin tasks. I want to challenge our readers to look at their P&L and ask: "Are we just speeding up the status quo, or are we redesigning the entire flow of work around a human-agent partnership?" That is where the real margin improvement lives.

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