Aug 14, 2025 6 min read Daily Rundown

🛎️ Neural Clash

Half Your Office Now Trusts AI More Than You

Good Morning, AI Enthusiasts!

Nearly half your colleagues would rather take orders from an algorithm than from you. On the bright side, AI doesn’t eat the last donut in the break room—yet.

BCI

OpenAI Bets on Neuralink Rival, Altman Sits Out

📌 What’s happening: OpenAI is backing Merge Labs, a brain-implant startup co-founded by Sam Altman and Worldcoin’s Alex Blania, aiming to splice AI with human neurons. Valued at $850M and seeking $250M in funding, most of the fresh capital is expected to come from OpenAI’s ventures arm—not Altman’s own wallet. That’s a twist, given his history of personally seeding frontier bets.

🧠 How this hits reality: Altman’s absence on the cap table smells more like corporate positioning than founder conviction. Brain-computer interfaces are still years away from meaningful commercial return, but they’re headline-rich. For OpenAI, this is less about near-term profit and more about owning the mindshare pipeline—literally—before Musk’s Neuralink monopolizes the sci-fi narrative. New tech category, same playbook: convert hype into traffic, then into platform gravity.

🛎️ Key takeaway: When Altman skips writing a check but sends OpenAI’s, it’s probably marketing dressed as moonshot.

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SURVEY

Half Your Office Now Trusts AI More Than You

📌 What’s happening: A CalypsoAI survey of 1,000 U.S. office workers found 45% trust AI tools like ChatGPT more than their colleagues. Executives are even bolder—two-thirds would use AI against company policy. One-third of all respondents say they’d quit if AI were banned. This isn’t just about shiny tech—it’s a referendum on messy leadership, office politics, and inconsistent decision-making.

🧠 How this hits reality: AI is becoming the “most reliable teammate” not because it’s flawless, but because people are tired of human bias, grudges, and policy whiplash. That trust gap means companies risk hardwiring algorithmic decision-making into workflows long before governance catches up—while sensitive data keeps getting fed to unsupervised models.

🛎️ Key takeaway: The workplace trust crisis isn’t AI replacing humans—it’s humans outsourcing trust to code.

REVOLUTION

SAP Wagers on AI Over Jobs

📌 What’s happening: The 53-year-old German software giant is deep into “Ambition 2025,” a restructuring that’s now expected to hit 9,000–10,000 jobs—up from the 8,000 announced in early 2024. Voluntary exits, retraining, and a pivot to enterprise AI applications are the official line. The bill? Roughly €3 billion in restructuring costs for about €200 million in annual savings.

🧠 How this hits reality: SAP isn’t just slimming down—it’s re-wiring for an AI-first sales and product strategy. Legacy roles are being phased out, AI engineering and sales talent phased in. That skill-mix shift could sharpen its edge in enterprise AI, but losing 10% of staff in 18 months is an execution gamble. Morale, delivery timelines, and customer trust are all in the blast radius.

🛎️ Key takeaway: Big bet: spend €3B to save €200M—because in SAP’s math, the delta is “AI growth.”

QUICK HITS

Rolls-Royce's CEO says powering AI with small nuclear reactors could make it the UK's most valuable company.
Google Photos is adding a new 'Create' tab to centralize its AI-powered editing tools.
Illinois bans the use of artificial intelligence in mental health therapy, joining a growing number of states scrutinizing chatbots
AMD and Anthropic CEOs push back against nine-figure salaries for AI talent, prioritizing mission and company culture over money.
YouTube is now using AI to guess user ages in the U.S., applying restrictions to accounts it believes belong to minors.

TRENDING

Daily AI Launches

Autumn launches an AI usage API that manages pricing, billing, and access with just three calls, is built on Stripe, and requires no backend.
mcp-use launches AI agent infrastructure offering open-source MCP tools with over 5,000 stars and 100,000 downloads, and is trusted by NASA, Cisco, and NVIDIA.
Cross Paths launches Bio Calls combining link-in-bio functionality with one-on-one calls and built-in monetization.
Kandid launches an AI sales assistant delivering 24/7 guidance, product recommendations, and upselling for consumer brands.

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