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Welcome to this week’s 🌮 Product Tapas.

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What’s cooking this week? 🥘

Google builds the shopping protocol every retailer adopts (then pays Apple $1B to power the competing interface), Anthropic ships Cowork for non-developers (Claude Code without the terminal - almost there), Grok generates 6,700 non-consensual images per hour (Pentagon deploys it anyway), Tesla kills the $8,000 FSD purchase (subscription shields liability, classic), LMArena hits $1.7B valuation in four months (velocity over fundamentals), and AI agents merge 1,500 code changes while you sleep (60-90% time savings). Meanwhile, Border collies learn toy names by eavesdropping (matching 18-month-old kids - your dog saw the machines coming first).

Google convinced every major retailer to adopt its Universal Commerce Protocol while Apple pays Google $1B annually to power Siri. Who wins - the company that owns the rails or controls the interface? Amazon's nowhere on this list, which tells you how fast e-commerce is fragmenting. The real question: do consumers actually want to hand over shopping control to AI agents? We've tried automated reordering before. Turns out people like browsing.

Claude Cowork wants to be Claude Code without terminals - should be perfect for non-developers. The gap? Claude Code lets you course-correct mid-execution. Cowork's more hands-off, and it doesn't quite work yet (early days/beta). Slack claims 90 minutes saved daily. Spotify merged 1,500 code changes, over half fully automated. This is the shift from "AI helps you write" to "AI does the writing while you sleep." Are companies ready to trust autonomous agents with production code? Spotify thinks yes.

Tesla's killing the $8,000 FSD purchase - subscription-only from Feb 14th. Why? When you buy it outright, you can sue for false advertising ("Full Self-Driving" that doesn't drive itself). Subscription at $99/month? You're just renting access month-to-month - cancel anytime. Much harder to win a lawsuit. It's a liability shield. Meta's doubling Ray-Ban glasses to 20M units because people will wear computers on their faces if they look normal. The device that works wins.

Hot on the heels of last week's ChatGPT Health announcement (40M daily users self-diagnosing), Anthropic ships HIPAA compliance and Apple Health integration - playing the enterprise game with prior auth reviews and FHIR standards. When your AI health companion gets something wrong, who controls the liability? Claude's betting on regulatory compliance as competitive advantage.

LMArena: product launch to $1.7B valuation in four months. xAI hoovering up $20B. a16z raised 18% of all 2025 US VC in one fund. The velocity is remarkable, but here's the question: when OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX hit public markets at near $2 trillion combined, who's left to write cheques? This looks less like sustainable expansion and more like the final act before we find out which companies have business models that match their valuations.

Grok generates 6,700 non-consensual nude images per hour - enough for EU, UK, and India to launch investigations. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's integrating the same AI into classified military networks this month. Defence Secretary Hegseth calls it "hard-nosed realism" - apparently deploying an AI that can't respect consent into systems planning "kill chain execution". What could go wrong? The timing isn't unfortunate, it's revealing.

Your dog is listening more carefully than you think. Gifted Border collies picking up toy names from overheard conversations - 80% accuracy, matching 18-month-old kids. This isn't AI. It's just dogs being smarter than we give them credit for. Maybe the real intelligence breakthrough this week wasn't in Silicon Valley.

Check the link here to access.

Bill Kerr interviews Zach Lloyd, the visionary Founder and CEO at Warp, to discuss how software advancements are reshaping developer experiences. Lloyd emphasises the importance of leveraging AI within developer tools to enhance speed and collaboration in software creation. Read the full article here.

💡 "I think about what I would want from a leader if I were in someone else’s shoes."

Packy McCormick delves into the intricate landscape of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) amidst its recent $15 billion fundraising milestone. He uncovers how the firm’s marketing prowess and steadfast belief in technological innovation uniquely position it within the venture capital arena. You can explore more insights in the full article Read the full article here.

💡 "We believe in the future and bet the Firm that way."

Paweł Huryn delivers a powerful one-two punch for product managers looking to master workflow automation: a concise 59-minute video course covering n8n fundamentals, plus The Ultimate Guide to n8n for PMs - a comprehensive written resource (now freely available, previously behind paywall). Together, these resources cover building workflows from scratch, creating AI agents, competitor monitoring, and production-ready implementation strategies. Watch the video course here.

💡 "Orchestration beats agency in 2025 - structured workflows combining human decision points with AI components outperform fully autonomous systems for business-critical processes."

Remember, we've built an ever-growing library of our top podcast summaries. Whether you need a quick refresher, want to preview an episode, or need to get up to speed fast - we've got you covered.

Check it out here🎙️ Pod Shots #118 - Bitesized Podcast Summaries - A Guide to Difficult Conversations, Building High-Trust Teams, and Designing a Life You Love

Many leaders avoid difficult conversations until it's too late - and that avoidance destroys trust, creates resentment, and turns manageable issues into existential crises. Rachel Lockett, executive coach and former HR leader at Stripe and Pinterest, reveals practical frameworks for productive conflict, building high-trust teams, and creating sustainable success without burning out.

Rachel has spent over a decade coaching CEOs, founders, and senior leaders at tech companies from early-stage startups to scale-ups. In this pod conversation with Lenny, she shares concrete tools for difficult conversations and the "one-page plan" operating rhythm that keeps teams aligned without bureaucracy - and demonstrates exactly how these frameworks work through live coaching sessions.

That’s a wrap.

As always, the journey doesn't end here!

Please share and let us know what you would like to see more or less of so we can continue to improve your Product Tapas. 🚀👋

Alastair 🍽️.