AI Insider: Who still makes money when AI is suddenly free?

This week AI kept getting cheaper and more common, while the money behind it got harder to read. Shakira teamed up with Amazon to train a million women in AI, ChatGPT started answering with real tools instead of plain text, one developer gave away free AI copies of Adobe's apps, OpenAI turned out to be making billions less than people thought, and a startup that slipped away from Meta just raised half a billion dollars. Here is what happened, and why it matters for you.

I've filtered out the noise for you

Five stories, no hype, no jargon. Just what happened in AI this week and what it means for your work, your money, and your tools.

1. Why is Shakira teaching a million women to use AI?

Shakira's foundation teamed up with Amazon Music, AWS, and Laboratoria to launch a free program called AWS Entrena Latinas, with the goal of training one million Latin American women in AI and cloud skills by 2028. The first phase starts in Colombia, and women who finish the courses earn official AI certifications from AWS. Only 26% of tech jobs today are held by women, and the partners want to push that toward 50%.

Link here.

2. ChatGPT can now build you an app, not just chat.

OpenAI rolled out GPT-6 with a feature called Intelligent UI, and it changes what an answer looks like. Instead of a wall of text, ChatGPT can now respond with interactive charts, forms, calculators, and little tools that build themselves while it is still thinking. Examples shown include a retirement calculator, a bill splitter, and a labeled bike diagram you can tap through, all delivered right inside the chat.

Link here.

3. One coder cloned 7 Adobe apps with AI and gave them away out of spite.

Frustrated by Adobe's cancellation fees, developer Brandon Thomas used AI to rebuild seven of Adobe's apps, including stand-ins for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere, and released them free and open source in a project called ArtCraft. He built them with Anthropic's Claude, and they racked up tens of thousands of GitHub stars in days. The catch: they are still early alpha, and only two of the seven are really usable so far.

Link here.

4. Is OpenAI making way less money than everyone thought?

According to the Financial Times, OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was near $50 billion at the end of September, about $20 billion less than a figure that had been circulating. The gap is not weaker demand, it is accounting: OpenAI leaves out sales made through its cloud partners, while the higher number counted them to make it look comparable to Anthropic. OpenAI is still growing fast, with revenue up more than 70%.

Link here.

5. How did Manus raise $500 million after their Meta deal fell through?

Manus, a startup that builds general-purpose AI agents, just raised more than $500 million led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital. The round is its first since a planned $2 billion takeover by Meta collapsed after China's government blocked the deal. Early investors bought the company back, it went independent again, and reports peg its new valuation near $4 billion, double what Meta was going to pay.

Link here.

Bonus: Content of the Week

Meta's personal assistant Muse is reportedly the fastest-growing product since ChatGPT, built by Alexandr Wang, whose company Meta bought for $14 billion. This week's bonus points to an interview with Wang on his strategy and where he thinks AI companies are headed.