|
Issue 002
|
|
|
AI for Operators & Founders · June 2026
AI Builder
Brief.
What happened in AI this week, and what it means for your work.
|
|
|
From the Desk
The week AI stopped being theoretical.
The week this newsletter launched, Anthropic raised $65 billion and became the most valuable AI company on Earth.
The valuation isn't the story. The revenue is. Anthropic passed $47 billion in annualized revenue last quarter and is projecting a profitable quarter ahead. That means enterprise AI adoption is already generating real, recurring money at a scale that attracts near-trillion-dollar bets. The tools you use for meeting prep and research are running on infrastructure investors are betting futures on.
This week: what that number actually signals for operators, how Google's AI is now completing transactions on your customers' behalf, and what agentic AI looks like for a company your size, in plain English.
|
Marliis Schneider
Founder & CEO, MakerSquare · Austin, TX
|
|
|
01 · The 3 Things
The AI stories worth your attention.
|
|
AI Industry · Funding
The company behind Claude is now worth more than Toyota, Disney, and Nike combined.
On May 28, Anthropic closed a $65 billion funding round at a $965 billion valuation, making it the most valuable AI company in the world, ahead of OpenAI. Investors include Sequoia, Blackstone, Fidelity, Amazon, Samsung, and SK Hynix. The company's annual run-rate revenue recently crossed $47 billion, and it is projecting a profitable quarter this year. Both Anthropic and OpenAI plan to go public in fall 2026.
|
Why it matters
The revenue number tells you more than the valuation. $47 billion in annualized run rate means enterprise AI adoption is already generating real, recurring money at scale. The organizations pulling ahead right now aren't using more powerful tools than you have access to. They're using the same tools more consistently, across more of their workflows.
|
Read the story →
|
|
| |
|
Google · AI Agents
Google's AI can now call your business, check availability, and book appointments for customers.
Expanding on its I/O announcements from two weeks ago, Google confirmed that AI agents in Search will begin booking appointments, calling local businesses to check availability, and completing service transactions on users' behalf, starting this summer with home repair, salon, and pet care categories. A separate set of agents will monitor the web continuously, alerting users when a product drops in price, a rental becomes available, or any condition they specified.
|
Why it matters
If you run any kind of bookable service, the customer journey just changed. Google's agent collapses the steps between Search and a confirmed booking. Whether your business shows up correctly when an AI decides to complete a transaction on someone's behalf is now a real operational question. Check your Google Business Profile, confirm your booking flow works on mobile, and verify your availability information is current.
|
Read the story →
|
|
| |
|
Workforce · Organizations
Middle management is thinning faster than the headlines suggest.
78,557 tech workers lost jobs in Q1 2026, with nearly half those cuts officially attributed to AI automation. The structural shift shows up in hiring data too: job postings for manager roles are down 12% year-over-year, while principal and lead roles grew 18% in the same period. Companies including Shopify, Duolingo, and Klara have begun eliminating coordination layers entirely. Gartner projects that 20% of companies will use AI to flatten their organizational structures by the end of 2026.
|
Why it matters
The roles disappearing share a pattern: built around coordinating information, routing decisions, and writing status updates. Roles built around judgment, client relationships, and accountability are holding. Before assuming this is a large-company story, spend 20 minutes mapping which roles in your organization fall into which category.
|
Read the story →
|
|
|
|
02 · Try This Today
Write your weekly update in 5 minutes.
Most professionals spend 30 to 60 minutes a week writing status updates from scattered notes, threads, and half-remembered meetings. This prompt cuts that to under 5.
|
Copy this prompt
I need to write a [weekly / monthly] [status update / report] for [who reads it].
Here are my raw notes from this [week / month]: [paste everything]
Turn this into a clean update in three sections:
1. What moved forward (3 bullet points, one sentence each)
2. What is blocked or needs a decision (if any)
3. What is coming next [week / month]
Tone: [direct and concise / formal / executive-level]
|
A draft in under 2 minutes. Edit for 3. If this saves you 30 minutes a week, that is 26 hours back this year. Run it once, then save the template somewhere you will actually find it.
|
|
03 · Deep Dive
Agentic AI at your scale.
Last week we explained what an AI agent is: an AI that takes a multi-step task and runs it without you doing every step by hand. Less chatbot, more autonomous executor.
The assumption most operators make is that setting one up requires an IT team, a budget, and a developer. That assumption is about 18 months out of date. Here are three examples of agentic behavior any operator can put in place this week, at no cost, without writing a single line of code.
|
"You don't build an agent. You describe a task, give the AI what it needs, and stop doing the middle steps yourself."
|
1. The research agent. You need a competitive overview before a pitch on Thursday. Instead of assigning three hours to someone, open Perplexity (this week's Tool Spotlight), type your question in plain English, and get a sourced answer in 90 seconds. Input a goal, get a completed output, skip the steps in between. That is agent behavior, available right now, for free.
2. The reporting agent. Every week, you write the same status update from the same scattered inputs. The prompt in Try This Today handles it. Paste your raw material, the AI structures and writes the draft, you edit for three minutes. Same output, minus 45 minutes.
3. The external agent already working on your customers. Google's AI booking system completes appointment bookings by calling your business directly. You didn't build it. You just need to make sure your business shows up correctly when it runs.
The pattern across all three: a clear input, a defined output, and an AI doing the steps in between. Find those tasks in your week and you've found your starting point.
|
Myth of the Week
"Agentic AI requires an IT team and a real budget." Picture a staffing firm using Claude to draft job descriptions, summarize candidate profiles, and prep interview questions before a human ever reviews the file. No IT budget. No code. A form feeds into a Claude prompt, the output goes into a shared doc. If a task has a clear input and a clear output, there is a version of this you can run today.
|
|
|
04 · Tool Spotlight
Perplexity.
The AI research engine that gives you answers instead of links.
Perplexity does what Google was supposed to do. Type a real question, "What are the main ways mid-size logistics companies are using AI in operations right now?" and it reads the current web, synthesizes the answer, and cites its sources, all in one response. No 14-tab rabbit hole.
For any operator doing research before a meeting, a pitch, or a hiring decision, this is the tool that saves the most time per use. Ask it about a company before a sales call, a market before a new product decision, or a vendor before signing a contract. The free version handles 90% of research tasks. Pro adds deeper sourcing and access to more models.
|
Best for
Research, competitive analysis, quick background
|
Price
Free
$20/mo (Pro)
|
Setup time
30 seconds
(no setup required)
|
|
|
05 · What We're Building
Five weeks to Cohort 1.
Fifteen operators, founders, and consultants. Two weeks in Austin. Three deployed AI products each, built on their actual businesses, not classroom exercises.
By Day 5, every student has a working tool connected to a real database. By Day 9, an automated workflow running inside the tools they already use. The capstone gets presented publicly at Demo Day on July 17, with Austin's tech community in the room.
No coding background required. If you've been reading these issues and thinking it might be time to stop tracking and start building, this is the week to confirm your spot.
|
Cohort 1
July 6-17
15 seats
|
Cohort 2
July 27-Aug 7
15 seats
|
Cohort 3
Aug 17-28
15 seats
|
Download the curriculum →
|
Know someone who should be reading this?
Forward it to a founder or operator who needs the signal without the noise.
No coding required · makersquare.ai
|
|
2-Week AI Builder Program · Austin, Texas
|
|