The AI Breakdown

AI is getting embedded everywhere and this week proved it. Salesforce is buying Qualified to power always on AI agents for pipeline. Lovable just raised big money at a massive valuation as vibe coding explodes. Microsoft and Google are leaning on partners to push AI from pilots to production. Notion reveals that AI now drives a huge chunk of revenue, and Zoom launches AI Companion 3.0 to turn meetings into actions. But there’s a catch: Reuters reports that many companies still aren’t seeing the ROI they expected. So what separates hype from real value?

In this week’s 10 minute AI news roundup, I break down a headline grabbing Disney move that could redefine what “legal generative AI” looks like at scale. Disney is reportedly investing $1 billion in OpenAI, negotiating warrants for optionality, licensing a vault of iconic characters for Sora, and rolling out ChatGPT across the company with strict guardrails. But the backlash is already here, with the Writers Guild of America warning this is a turning point in the fight over creative labour and value. Then we jump into the model wars. OpenAI ships GPT 5.2 with a massive 400k context window and tiered variants for speed, deep analysis, and maximum accuracy, while Google counters with Gemini Deep Research and an Interactions API designed to embed autonomous research workflows into products. We also cover a major UK partnership with Google DeepMind aimed at accelerating science through automation, plus why Microsoft’s new Copilot pricing for small businesses, Nvidia’s move to buy the company behind Slurm, and a fresh wave of copyright lawsuits all point to one thing: the legal and infrastructure layers of AI are now product critical.

This week I break down the biggest moves shaping the future of AI. OpenAI’s new enterprise report shows explosive adoption and usage growth, IBM drops eleven billion on Confluent to own the data-streaming backbone, Accenture goes deep with Anthropic in a partnership that could reshape corporate AI, and Runway’s Gen 4.5 quietly leapfrogs the giants in video generation. We also look at Instacart’s new agentic shopping experience inside ChatGPT, Anthropic’s push to bring Claude to nonprofits, and why Mistral’s open models are becoming a serious force.

This week on The AI Breakdown, I’m unpacking the biggest signals in AI - from Accenture’s massive OpenAI partnership to Lyft’s 87% support-time drop using Claude, to why 79% of companies are quietly rolling back their AI projects. We dig into: How consulting giants are gearing up to sell AI transformation at scale OpenAI’s surprising move into accounting and IT services TwelveLabs’ new video model turning dark data into gold Nissan’s push toward truly software-defined vehicles Rezolve’s $90M grab for Crownpeak and what it means for AI-powered commerce AWS + Visa laying the rails for agentic shopping Bezos-backed Project Prometheus and the rise of desktop-level AI agents

This week we’re looking at AI moving from hype to hands-on. We start with OpenAI and DoorDash running “AI Jam” workshops for over 1,000 small businesses across US cities – helping restaurant owners, accountants and retailers build AI tools they can actually use the next day. Meanwhile, the tech giants are doing the opposite of slowing down: nearly $90 billion raised in fresh bonds to fuel data centres, GPUs and cloud infrastructure. Nvidia smashed expectations again (with numbers even stronger than headlines suggest), Model ML just banked $75m to automate investment banking grunt work, and a mid-tier London accounting firm cut a two-week task down to two hours using Gemini 2.5. At the same time, Amazon is telling engineers to ditch third-party coding assistants for its in-house AI tool “Kiro”, and the UK government wants regional AI Growth Zones to make AI adoption easier for business – though the details are fuzzier than the headline. We pull it all together through one lens: AI is embedding fast at both ends of the market – from small cafés drafting menus in a workshop, to hyperscalers dropping billions to keep the GPU taps flowing. If you're building or scaling with AI, this episode gives you a heads-up on what’s coming next.