3 Shifts Edition (Nov 1 2024): Defining Open-source AI, The Changing US Space Industry, The Expansions Of GitHub’s Copilot 6Pages Market Shifts podcast

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Hi everyone – welcome to your 3 Shifts Edition [AI-generated audio version]. First, Trump’s blanket tariffs are crashing the economy, with nearly all major US trading partners hit with new levies. Some, like the EU, China, and Vietnam, are facing eye-popping 20-65%+ rates. The 25% auto tariffs are now live too, sending car prices higher. Next, Amazon is going full Hollywood, announcing plans at CinemaCon to release 15 big-screen films per year. Amazon sees theatrical as both a prestige play to lure in creatives as well as advance marketing for later streaming releases (with their adjacent downstream revenue). Finally, Instacart is quietly turning its shoppers into a crowdsourced data army, tasking them with capturing video of store shelves and inventory. Highly accurate and timely inventory data opens up an array of new opportunities for Instacart, its customers, and retailer partners. Enjoy. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Mar 28 2025): OpenAI and advanced image generation, Europe's defense mobilization, China’s commercial space industry 24:32

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Hi everyone – welcome to your 3 Shifts Edition [AI-generated audio version]. First, OpenAI’s new image-generation feature is shockingly useful. It will actually follow the user’s direction as you iterate on a piece of work – instead of having to continually spin the roulette wheel and hope it spits out something useful. Next, Europe is finally serious on defense – with Germany, France, and the broader EU rolling out big spending packages in response to Trump’s reorientation and Russia’s looming shadow. The reshaping of the US-EU relationship is having unforeseen consequences, such as EU nations looking to expand their nuclear arsenals. Finally, China is putting billions into reusable rockets, with the aim of building a SpaceX-style commercial space industry. With an array of startups and state-backed giants pushing on reusable vehicles and megaconstellations, it looks like China will be making low-earth orbit a much more crowded place. Enjoy. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Mar 21 2025): Amazon gets ambitious, The EPA’s regulation rollback begins, BYD EVs can charge 400 km in 5 min 25:29

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Hi everyone – welcome to your 3 Shifts Edition [AI-generated audio version]. First, Amazon is making big moves on multiple fronts, from its own reasoning model to slashing prices on chips to a supercharged Alexa to challenges to Google’s cross-site ad-buying platform. After a stretch of cost-cutting, Amazon is planning a $100B capex budget for 2025 that will outpace all of its rivals. Is this a comeback arc? Next, the EPA’s regulation rollback has officially kicked off, with 31 actions starting to unwind rules on power plants, oil and gas, vehicles, pollutants standards, GHG reporting, and the key “endangerment finding,” among others. It all still needs to go through the formal rulemaking process, but the Trump administration is firing the starting pistol early. Finally, Chinese EV maker BYD is turning heads with its new ultra-fast charging tech, claiming 400 km of range in just 5 minutes – about the time it takes to fill up a tank. With its vertical integration, global expansion, and R&D push, BYD is no longer Tesla’s low-cost shadow – it’s growing rapidly and building the future at warp speed. Enjoy. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Mar 14 2025): Is this a surge in M&A?, AI’s inevitability in ad-buying, Trump’s revival of US shipbuilding 16:56

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Hi everyone – welcome to your 3 Shifts Edition [AI-generated audio version]. First, 2025 is finally showing nascent signs of a more full-throttled comeback for M&A, after years of sluggish activity. With examples like Rocket snapping up Redfin and Unilever shedding €1B in brands, dealmaking seems to be warming up. A looser antitrust stance under the Trump administration and AI-driven acquisitions are fueling the momentum. Next, AI is taking over ad-buying, automating everything from audience targeting to ad placement. Meta, Google, TikTok, and others have rolled out end-to-end AI tools, and marketers are trading less control for higher returns. The future of digital ad-buying seems to be – push a button, let AI do its thing, and hope it doesn’t blow your budget before noon. Finally, Trump wants to bring back US shipbuilding, with a new White House office and tax incentives to jumpstart production. The draft plan includes docking fees for Chinese-built ships and operators of fleets with a high proportion of Chinese-built ships. Whether this sparks a shipbuilding renaissance or just raises import costs remains to be seen. Enjoy. Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Mar 7 2025): 25% tariffs on Canada & Mexico, The body blow to federal consulting, Google’s crackdown on search manipulation 28:42

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Hi everyone – welcome to your 3 Shifts Edition [AI-generated audio version]. First, Trump’s 25% tariffs on North American allies have taken effect – at least for the 62% of the imports from Canada and 50% of the imports from Mexico that remain exposed after the recent amendments. Canada has fired back with tariffs on $30B CAD worth of US goods, and Mexico is expected to announce its own countermeasures on Sunday. Next, federal consulting firms are facing a crisis, with the Trump administration’s cost-cutting spree targeting billions in contracts. Big names like Deloitte, Accenture, and Booz Allen are seeing projects axed, and consultants on the bench are wondering if they’ll see a pink slip next. Finally, Google is cracking down on search manipulation, including low-quality content and SEO gaming. Media companies that leaned into coupon links and product reviews are watching their traffic plummet, as Google doubles down on "real" content. Enjoy the read – and if you’re in Canada, we still love Canadians over here. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Feb 28 2025): The growth of TikTok Shop, When will humanoid robots be useful?, Distributed networks of GPUs 31:57

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Hi everyone – welcome to your [AI-generated] 3 Shifts Edition. First, TikTok Shop is seeing significant growth in the US – with 153% year-over-year growth, far outpacing rivals like Shein and Temu. Despite uncertainty around TikTok’s future in the US, the platform’s shoppable videos, live-selling, and branded stores are making their mark on social commerce. Next, AI is accelerating progress in humanoid robots – making them more versatile, capable, and trainable via imitation learning. Meta, Tesla, Nvidia, and OpenAI are all making moves, signaling that we could be approaching the ChatGPT moment for physical AI. Finally, startups are building decentralized networks of GPUs to tap into underutilized compute. Companies like Exo Labs and Berkeley Compute are developing infrastructure that could help lower AI costs, particularly for inference. Enjoy. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Feb 21 2025): xAI’s Grok 3 is highly performant, Arm will make its own chips, China’s breakneck pace in biotech 17:37

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Hi everyone – welcome to your [AI-generated] 3 Shifts Edition. When selecting the 3 market shifts that you should know about every week, our 6Pages team typically looks for shifts that aren’t just big but also have an element of being surprising. That certainly fit the bill this week. Our first Shift explores Elon Musk’s xAI and the progress of its Grok models. Grok 3, which was just introduced, is currently placed #1 on the Chatbot Arena leaderboard – outperforming most of the other players (although not OpenAI’s o3, which has not been released). Next, CPU chip designer Arm is going to make its own chips. The move is rocking the industry, and represents a major shift in Arm’s business model of being Switzerland and licensing its designs to other companies. Rumor has it the move is being driven by SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son. Finally, the US may see a DeepSeek-like disruption from China in biotech. 31% of the molecules licensed by big pharma are now coming from China – up from 0 in 2019. Chinese-developed drugs today are often high-efficacy “me too better” versions, as China moves up the innovation ladder. Enjoy. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Feb 14 2025): The fight against “forever chemicals”, Tech unemployment reaches 5.7%, “Deep research” tools everywhere 15:38

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Hi everyone – welcome to your [AI-generated] 3 Shifts Edition. Our first Shift delves into the growing sentiment against “forever chemicals” – known as PFAS – among policymakers and consumers. Recent months have seen state-level bans of products with PFAS as well as a wave of new PFAS-related consumer lawsuits. Next, tech-sector unemployment recently jumped up to 5.7% in Jan 2025, according to a WSJ report. The layoffs are being attributed to factors such as AI, high interest rates constraining growth, past overhiring and current above-market compensation, continued pushback against remote work, and R&D tax-deduction changes. Finally, OpenAI’s Deep Research is getting rave reviews and it isn’t the only “deep research” tool out there. There’s also Google’s Deep Research, Perplexity’s Deep Research, Hugging Face’s Open Deep Research, and other open alternatives from individuals. It indicates a growing recognition of the vast usefulness of an AI-powered research agent. If you haven’t already, check out the final report in our series collaboration with TDK Ventures: “ The Opinionated CVC: A perspective on strategy, process and people .” And as always, if you have any feedback for us, feel free to hit ‘reply’ and let us know what you think. Enjoy. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Feb 7 2025): Tariffs and the de minimis closure, The end of the CFPB, Distillation and AI economics 17:33

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Hi everyone – welcome back to your [AI-generated] 3 Shifts Edition. A lot has changed in the past week, and the Gulf of Mexico becoming the Gulf of America is not even the strangest. In our first Shift: The long-promised tariffs have become real – at least for China. (The tariffs on Canada and Mexico were paused for 30 days.) Notably, the executive order clarifies that all items from China are no longer allowed to use the duty-free de minimis exemption (ahem, Temu and Shein). Next, we take a look at the end of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as we know it. After the firing of Rohit Chopra, CFPB staffers were ordered to halt most of their work on rulemaking, enforcement actions, litigation, and communications. Finally, everyone is talking about distillation and its impact on AI economics. A distilled model (e.g. DeepSeek) can be “up to 500% faster and 75% less expensive to run,” while losing less than 2% accuracy. Just this past week, a US-based team distilled a model that outperforms o1-preview for just $21 and in 26 minutes, using a dataset of just 1,000 questions. One final note – check out the final report in our series collaboration with TDK Ventures: “ The Opinionated CVC: A perspective on strategy, process and people .” It presents a slightly more “opinionated” perspective on how a CVC should be organized. As always, if you have any feedback for us, feel free to hit ‘reply’ and let us know what you think. Enjoy. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Jan 31 2025): The Fed’s pause on rate cuts, A private-sector rollback on DEI, This generation of personal AI assistants 25:58

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Hi everyone – welcome back to your [AI-generated] 3 Shifts Edition. It’s been a tumultuous week in the markets but if you’re looking for DeepSeek, we wrote about it in our 3 Shifts Edition on Jan 17: “ China’s notable progress in AI models .” (We also covered it in our Jan 10 edition the week prior.) Looking ahead now, our first Shift delves into the Fed’s pause on rate cuts. While not a surprise, it is the first time the Fed has hit pause since the current rate-cutting cycle began in Sep 2024. Powell is signaling he doesn’t intend to do a quick reversion back to cuts. Next, we take a look at the private-sector pullback on DEI in the wake of Trump’s executive order. In a recent survey, 1 in 8 companies reported plans to reduce or eliminate their DEI commitments in 2025. Finally, the past couple weeks have seen the introduction of browser-based and multi-app assistants from major AI players – OpenAI’s Operator and Perplexity Assistant. This category of AI agents has the potential to be much less bounded, opening up a cascade of downstream consequences for a large population. As always, if you have any feedback for us, feel free to hit ‘reply’ and let us know what you think. Enjoy. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Jan 24 2025): TikTok is off app stores, Trump's executive orders, Blue Origin's New Glenn launch 31:01

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Hi everyone – welcome back to your [AI-generated] 3 Shifts Edition. Our first Shift revisits the TikTok ban, now that it has technically gone into effect. The ban is being facilitated by app-store owners Apple and Google, who are still complying with the law despite Trump’s 75-day non-enforcement. A resolution is needed since the app will eventually become unusable without updates/fixes. New users are already no longer able to download TikTok, and existing users can’t redownload it to new devices. Next, we take a look at the spate of executive actions, orders, and repeals in Trump’s first week. As of this writing, he has signed a total of 57 presidential actions including 30 executive orders – encompassing technology, energy and the environment, trade and foreign policy, immigration, national security, social policy, and the federal government. Finally, Blue Origin successfully launched its long-awaited New Glenn rocket – demonstrating its ability to send satellites into orbit and eventually astronauts into space. The launch begins a new era for Blue Origin, which has long been stuck in “development hell.” As always, if you have any feedback for us, feel free to hit ‘reply’ and let us know what you think. Enjoy. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Jan 17 2025): What happens to US home insurance next, China’s notable progress in AI models, NATO countries’ defense spending will rise 18:36

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Hi everyone – welcome back to your [AI-generated] 3 Shifts Edition. We hope this writing finds you safe and well. Our first Shift examines the massive insured losses stemming from the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires, and what it will mean for homeowners and insurers in the future. Higher premiums in the years ahead are a given. The question is how will they be passed along. Next, China’s investment push in AI is paying off, with its models climbing the leaderboards. DeepSeek-V3 is now leading the market among open models. What makes DeepSeek-V3 particularly notable is that it offers comparable performance to leading proprietary models like Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2 but is 53x cheaper for inference. Finally, Trump wants NATO countries to increase their defense spending target from 2% to 5% of GDP. His claim during the campaign that he would not defend a member that didn’t meet its target is also raising questions about NATO countries’ overreliance on the US security umbrella. As always, if you have any feedback for us, feel free to hit ‘reply’ and let us know what you think. Thank you. – Tam Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com…

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3 Shifts Edition (Jan 10 2025): Social media’s shift away from moderation, GPT-5’s troubles and AI data, Uber steers toward autonomous driving 28:48

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Hi everyone – happy 2025, and welcome back to the AI-generated podcast version of your 3 Shifts Edition. Our first Shift takes a look at Meta’s decision to stop 3rd-party fact-checking and take a lighter touch with content moderation, moving instead towards a user-generated "Community Notes" model (like X). We may see other big tech firms follow Meta’s lead. Next, the release of OpenAI’s “GPT-5” (Orion) has been delayed and plagued with troubles. Its issues have their roots in AI’s perennial resource problems – training data and compute. This is all part of a vigorous debate in the AI field on whether “scaling laws” will soon hit a wall. Finally, Uber has been making moves that confirm its growing commitment to robotaxis and belief that the market is now ready. It doesn’t have too many rivals in the robotaxi race – its scale as the world’s largest ride-hailing company means it will enjoy the “best utilization and unit economics” for AVs. One little tweak we’re trying out – we’re moving our meatiest brief to the second shift out of the three. (It used to be first, in the interests of putting our best foot forward.) We’re hoping this small shuffle might tempt a few more folks to join us in our paid subscription – and help make 6Pages more financially sustainable. Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com Thank you. – Tam…

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3 Shifts Edition (Dec 20 2024): Jail time for crypto tax evasion, The carveout of cable channels, The transformation of ad agencies 15:17

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Hi everyone – welcome to your [AI-generated] 3 Shifts Edition. Our first Shift takes a look at “the first criminal tax evasion prosecution centered solely on cryptocurrency.” An individual investor was sentenced to two years in prison for underreporting capital gains from $4M+ in crypto sales. The prosecution is signaling a shift in enforcement by the IRS. Next, Comcast and Warner Bros Discovery are both restructuring to carve out their legacy cable TV channels. The moves are sparking speculations of a coming wave of deal-making ahead in 2025 that could shake up the media industry. Finally, Omnicom’s announced acquisition of Interpublic – forming the “world’s largest ad conglomerate” – is roiling the industry. The deal’s underpinnings are technological. Ad agencies are facing sweeping change as generative AI erodes the roles of creatives, agencies need data for personalized marketing, and big tech firms increasingly compete with agencies for ad spend. Sign up for free briefs written by real people on 6Pages.com Enjoy. – Tam…

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3 Shifts Edition (Dec 13 2024): Trump's latest regulators of note, Will TikTok actually get banned?, Google breaks through with its Willow quantum chips 18:50

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