From Mira Murati’s new startup hitting a staggering $50 billion valuation despite losing key co-founders back to OpenAI, to the regional expansion of 4iG in North Macedonia, it is clear that the tech industry is moving faster than ever. We are also witnessing a fundamental shift in how we build software and are basically witnessing a YouTube moment, where the barrier to entry has vanished, allowing anyone with an idea to become a creator.

What makes this week even more significant is the realization that these tools are becoming deeply personal. Google’s launch of Gemini’s Personal Intelligence is a direct step toward the vision shared by top AI leaders that within five years, we will all have a personal AI assistant. These agents won't just manage tasks, they will know what we do, what we see, and even how we feel, acting as a seamless extension of our daily lives. It’s an exciting, if slightly surreal, glimpse into a future where technology isn't just a tool we use, but a partner that understands us.

The world of coding is undergoing a transformation similar to what happened to video when YouTube launched in 2005. Before YouTube, creating video content required massive budgets and professional crews, while today, anyone with a phone can reach a global audience. We are now seeing the same "long-tail" creation wave for software, where the barriers to building complex applications have effectively collapsed due to Large Language Models.

Tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and Antigravity are compressing development time from weeks to just hours. This shift means that you no longer need to be a professional programmer to build functional software. People are already shipping entire ad campaigns from the command line or building custom medical dashboards in their spare time. The era where software was only built by "experts" with millions in funding is giving way to an era where software is a form of personal expression available to everyone.

This "YouTube Moment" for software has three major implications. First, the pool of builders is expanding beyond the tech-savvy elite to anyone with a good idea. Second, software is becoming a creative medium rather than just a utility, allowing for innovation or entertaining projects to be built as easily as making a social media post. Finally, unlike content that loses value over time, software compounds in value as it scales. We are entering a viral era of creation where the only limit is a person’s imagination.

This is a meaningful milestone that deserves more attention. With the backing of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) as a strategic capital partner, SPEEEX has completed its first international M&A, acquiring majority stakes in several Swiss companies, including pdc Marketing + Information Technology AG, Profi Office GmbH, Profi Contact SARL, and LabourSearch GmbH. For a Kosovo-based company, this is a real step change, not just expansion, but ownership and integration at an international level.

The move is backed by a €13 million EBRD financing package, designed to support SPEEEX’s international expansion and accelerate innovation across CX, data, and AI-driven service platforms. EBRD’s involvement matters here. This is institutional capital backing execution, governance, and long-term scalability, not just growth headlines. Zooming out, this is a milestone for Kosovo’s knowledge-based economy.

A local company is no longer just delivering services abroad. It’s acquiring, integrating, and scaling internationally, exporting capability and leadership alongside talent. This is how ecosystems level up.

Anthropic just revealed that Cowork, a new internal AI tool, was written almost entirely by its own model, Claude Code. Not assisted. Not accelerated. Built. The team’s role was mainly to guide, review, and correct along the way. The message is subtle but powerful: we’re entering a phase where AI doesn’t just help engineers write code, it can take responsibility for building real software systems end to end.

What makes this interesting isn’t the novelty. It’s the workflow shift. Engineers described Cowork as a product shaped through conversation, iteration, and supervision, rather than traditional line-by-line coding. Humans focused on defining intent, constraints, and outcomes, while the AI handled large portions of execution. This is less about productivity gains and more about a change in how software is conceived and assembled.

Zooming out, this reinforces a broader trend we’ve been tracking. The most valuable skill is moving up the stack, from writing code to designing systems, steering agents, and judging results. When AI can build tools for itself, the bottleneck stops being syntax and starts being judgment. Cowork isn’t just a tool. It’s a preview of how software teams may operate sooner than most people expect.

AI has changed how consumers shop by speeding up research. But one thing hasn’t changed: shoppers still trust people more than AI.

Levanta’s new Affiliate 3.0 Consumer Report reveals a major shift in how shoppers blend AI tools with human influence. Consumers use AI to explore options, but when it comes time to buy, they still turn to creators, communities, and real experiences to validate their decisions.

The data shows:

The most effective brands are combining AI discovery with authentic human influence to drive measurable conversions.

Affiliate marketing isn’t being replaced by AI, it’s being amplified by it.

Download the full report to see what this means for your brand.

The government of North Macedonia has officially selected the Hungarian telecommunications group 4iG as the country’s third mobile network operator. This decision follows a period of market analysis aimed at increasing competition in the local telecom sector. By introducing a new player, the government hopes to lower prices and improve the quality of mobile services for citizens.

The entry of 4iG marks a significant shift in a market long dominated by two major providers, Makedonski Telekom and A1 Macedonia. 4iG has been expanding its footprint across the Western Balkans and sees North Macedonia as a strategic location for its growth. The company is expected to invest heavily in infrastructure, including the deployment of 5G technology, to compete with the existing providers.

This move is part of a broader strategy to modernize the digital landscape in North Macedonia. With a third operator on the way, consumers can expect more diverse service packages and better connectivity options. For 4iG, this license represents a major milestone in its goal to become a leading telecommunications provider in the region.

Google is taking a major step toward making Gemini a truly proactive assistant by launching a new feature called Personal Intelligence. This beta update allows the AI to access your data across Google services like Gmail, Drive, Photos, and YouTube to provide highly customized answers. Instead of just answering general questions, Gemini can now retrieve specific details from your life, such as finding your car's tire size from an old email or identifying a license plate from a photo.

A key focus of this update is how the AI uses your sensitive information safely. Google emphasizes that while Gemini references your personal files to deliver a reply, it does not use your private emails or photos to train its models. The system is designed to understand the context of your requests without "learning" the actual data. Users have full control over the feature, which is turned off by default and allows you to choose exactly which apps are connected.

Why Google is winning the race?

Maybe you haven’t had time to check the news, but the new attention is on personalization right now! Claude remembers conversations. ChatGPT stores preferences. Perplexity learns from what you search inside its app and so on. It is useful, yes, but still narrow and fragmented!

Google isn’t starting from prompts or chat history. It’s activating context from Gmail threads going back years, Photos libraries, Maps behavior, YouTube history, Search queries, and all the signals people have been generating since the mid-2000s. That’s the real power of Google, the rest don’t have!

Google owns the personalization layer. So yes benchmarks is still interesting but as per usual in the tech world, the data is the real power. And Google has access to it, as well as to distribution! So before AI was even a headline, Google spent two decades to build the pipelines!

Mira Murati’s startup, Thinking Machines, is facing a significant leadership challenge just months after its high-profile launch. Two of the company’s co-founders, Barret Zoph and Luke Metz, have officially left the venture to rejoin their former employer, OpenAI. This move is a surprising turn for the $12 billion startup, especially since Zoph served as the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

The departures have triggered different accounts regarding the split. Murati announced on social media that the company had "parted ways" with Zoph, while reports suggest he was dismissed following allegations of sharing confidential information. Almost immediately after the announcement, OpenAI executives confirmed that both Zoph and Metz were returning to the AI giant, noting that the move had been in discussion for several weeks.

To stabilize the technical team, Murati has appointed Soumith Chintala as the new CTO. Chintala is a respected figure in the industry known for his work on PyTorch and has been a key member of the startup since its early days. While losing founding members is a setback, Thinking Machines continues to push forward with its flagship product, Tinker, and its ambitious goal of making AI models more customizable for businesses.

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