Good morning & happy Tuesday! Today, we're looking into Revolut, whose recent operational milestone with OpenAI signals a new era of AI Economics in FinTech (what it's all about & what it indicates about how FinTechs will be using AI in the future + bonus deep dive into Revolut inside), and Sony, which is about to issue a USD stablecoin to reshape entertainment payments (what's the USP here & why it makes sense + bonus dive into Klarna & recently announced KlarnaUSD & the ultimate list of stables resources inside). So let's just jump straight into the good stuff '' Rather than celebrating the milestone, Nesterov publicly labeled the achievement a waste on LinkedIn, revealing that Revolut had actually burned through several trillion tokens. His message included a direct call to engineers: help us reduce our dependence on external AI vendors....
On September 28, 1.1 million Americans tuned in for the 37th season premiere of the groundbreaking animated sitcom The Simpsons. A little more than a week later, another groundbreaking animated sitcom had its season premiere: The Will Stancil Show debuted on X, where it accumulated 1.7 million views. Since then, three more episodes have been released, piling up more than 3.5 million additional views and generating seemingly as many memes. The show, which was created by a provocateur-cartoonist named Emily Youcis, is notable for at least two reasons. It appears to be one of the first popular online television series made with the assistance of artificial intelligence'Youcis drew the cartoon and wrote the script, then used OpenAI's Sora to bring the animation to life. And also, The Will Stancil Show is neo-Nazi propaganda. The Will Stancil Show is all but impossible to explain to someone who is not addicted to The Website Formerly Known as Twitter, but I'll do my best. The real-world Will Stancil is a 40-year-old Minneapolis lawyer and minor social-media celebrity who once ran for the Minnesota House of Representatives (and has written for The Atlantic). He has become a favorite target of the far right for being something like the Platonic pure form of the Trump-era liberal wonk. He is enthusiastic about policy minutiae, perpetually irate at various MAGA-world characters, and prone to brawling with racists online, and he has a lot of graduate degrees....
The acquisition, completed for an undisclosed sum, follows Mari's $200m purchase of the Frieze global art fair in May and underscores its ambition to build a diversified portfolio of premium live entertainment assets. TodayTix, founded in 2013 by Broadway producers Brian Fenty and Merritt Baer, began as a digital ticketing platform for theatre productions before expanding into broader live experiences, including concerts and supper clubs. The company bought Secret Cinema in 2022 for $100m, marking its move into large-scale immersive events. Secret Cinema is best known for transforming undisclosed venues into elaborate interactive environments inspired by blockbuster films and television series. It has previously partnered with Disney and Netflix to stage experiences based on Guardians of the Galaxy and Stranger Things. Fenty, who will remain CEO of TodayTix and join Mari's executive team, said the acquisition followed an 'incredibly competitive' bidding process. He added that Mari's scale, including access to a 20-million-member global customer base, would accelerate growth into new event formats, sports, and art venues....
On Tuesday, OpenAI released an AI video app called Sora. The platform is powered by OpenAI's latest video generation model, Sora 2, and revolves around a TikTok-like For You page of user-generated clips. This is the first product release from OpenAI that adds AI-generated sounds to videos. For now, it's available only on iOS and requires an invite code to join. 'You are about to enter a creative world of AI-generated content,' reads an advisory page displayed during the app sign-up process. 'Some videos may depict people you recognize, but the actions and events shown are not real.' OpenAI is betting that creating and sharing AI deepfakes will become a popular form of entertainment. Whether it's your friends, influencers, or random strangers online, Sora frames generating deepfake videos as a form of scrollable fun. The app's main feed is an endless serving of bite-size AI slop featuring human faces. During the set-up process, users are given the option to create a digital likeness of themselves by saying a few numbers aloud and turning their head around as the app records. 'The team worked very hard on character consistency,' wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a blog about Sora's release....
