MakerSquare Issue 006
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

This week, AI became about power.

Not capability. Not tools. Power.

Who decides which companies get access to the newest AI first. Which workers lose their jobs — and whether AI is actually the real reason. Which tools are now embedded in the software your whole team already uses.

This week: the White House started gatekeeping frontier AI model releases. Harvard Business Review published a finding about AI layoffs that changes how you should read every headline on the subject. And Claude quietly showed up inside Microsoft 365, where hundreds of millions of people work every day.
Marliis Schneider
Founder & CEO, MakerSquare · Austin, TX
01 · The 3 Things

The AI stories worth your attention.
Workforce · Layoffs

50,000 jobs cut this year citing AI. Most of those cuts happened before AI did the work.

TechCrunch's running list hit 50,000 AI-cited layoffs in 2026 as of June 22 — out of 185,000 total job cuts tracked so far this year. GitLab cut 14% of its workforce and redirected the savings into AI products. Verizon cut 13,000 roles citing an "AI-first" strategy. But a Harvard Business Review analysis found the pattern that explains all of it: most of these cuts are happening because executives believe AI will eventually do the job — not because it already does. Companies are restructuring around a bet on what AI will do in 18 months.
Why it matters
Decisions about roles are being made based on what AI is expected to do, not what it does today. That changes the calculus: waiting to see if AI actually proves itself at your job isn't a safe strategy anymore. The organizations restructuring are making those calls now — and the 18-month window before AI catches up is the window that matters.
Read the story →
 
Policy · AI Access

The White House is now deciding who gets access to new AI first.

On June 25, the White House asked OpenAI to restrict the launch of its new GPT-5.6 model to a short list of government-approved organizations. Sam Altman told staff that the government would be "approving access customer by customer." This is the first time the U.S. government has preemptively gated an American AI model release before it went public — and it came after the administration's export control order on Anthropic's latest models earlier this month.
Why it matters
The frontier tools that will define what's possible next year are now filtered through Washington before they reach you. That's a new variable in every AI strategy: the gap between what exists and what you can access is no longer just about price or availability. It's becoming a policy question. Understanding that gap — and building on what you can access now — is more valuable than waiting for the next model.
Read the story →
 
Productivity · Tools

Claude just showed up inside Microsoft 365. No new apps required.

Microsoft's Wave 3 Copilot update, announced June 22, added Anthropic's Claude directly into Microsoft 365 — Word, Excel, Teams, Outlook — alongside a new "Copilot Cowork" mode for agentic tasks and general availability of Agent 365. For the hundreds of millions of people who work inside Microsoft 365 daily, this is the most significant AI upgrade of the week. The model is already there. You don't need to open anything new.
Why it matters
The moment AI stops requiring a separate app and starts living inside the tool you already have open all day, the adoption barrier disappears. The people who have already built habits around AI will use it more. The people who haven't will find it harder to ignore. If your organization has Copilot enabled, this week was the week to start paying attention to what it can actually do inside your workflow.
Read the story →
02 · Try This Today

Test Claude inside Microsoft 365 this week.

If your organization has Microsoft 365 Copilot enabled, you now have access to Claude without leaving Word, Outlook, or Teams. The goal isn't to be impressed. It's to find one task in your weekly workflow where it saves you 20 or more minutes — and make that your anchor use case.
Try this in Outlook or Word
Open Copilot in Word or Outlook. Give it one of these tasks:

In Outlook: "Summarize this email thread and draft a reply that [specific outcome you need]."

In Word: "Restructure this document so the key recommendation comes first, followed by supporting evidence."

After it responds: note what it got right, what it got wrong, and what you had to fix. That gap is exactly what you need to learn to close. Do this three times this week with real tasks, not test prompts.
If your org doesn't have Copilot enabled yet, flag it to IT or operations. The Wave 3 update is worth prioritizing.
03 · Deep Dive

Companies aren't cutting jobs because AI does the work. They're cutting because they believe it will.

That's the core finding from Harvard Business Review's January analysis, and it reframes every AI layoff story published this year.

The companies cutting headcount aren't doing it because AI has already replaced those roles. They're doing it because leadership has decided it will — and they're restructuring in advance. GitLab redirected the savings from its 14% workforce cut into AI product development. Verizon's 13,000 role reduction came before its "AI-first" strategy was fully operational.

The restructuring is happening in the gap between what AI promises and what it currently delivers. And that gap, for most business functions, is still measured in months — not years.
Decisions about your role are being made based on what AI is expected to do — not what it does today. That changes what "waiting to see" actually costs.
The other side of the same data: PwC's 2026 Jobs Barometer found that jobs requiring AI skills are growing eight times faster than the overall market, with a 62% wage premium attached. The people who understand AI well enough to direct it, manage its outputs, and catch its errors are the ones companies are actively competing to hire.

The layoff headlines and the hiring surge are happening simultaneously — and they're describing the same shift from two different angles.
Myth of the Week
"AI layoffs are happening because AI already does the job." In most cases, it doesn't yet. The cuts are based on the expectation that it will. That's a different problem — and it means the relevant question isn't whether AI will replace your role, it's whether your organization has already made a decision based on the assumption that it will. Understanding that distinction is what gives you time to act.
04 · Tool Spotlight

Perplexity.

The AI that gives you sourced answers instead of search results.
You type a question — about your industry, a competitor, a regulatory change, a market trend — and Perplexity gives you a direct answer with citations you can click through and verify. Not ten links to scroll through. One answer, grounded in recent sources.

One non-obvious use case given this week's news: set up a Monday morning routine. Ask it "What happened in [your industry] this week that I should know about?" Done consistently, it replaces an hour of scattered reading with ten minutes of targeted catch-up. The citations mean you can verify anything before you act on it.

This week, Perplexity also opened its Deep Research feature to API access — meaning you can now trigger multi-step research workflows programmatically. If you're building internal tools, that's worth a look.
Best for
Research & staying current in your field
Price
Free
Pro from $20/mo
Setup time
~2 minutes
05 · What We're Building

Seven days to Cohort 1.

Spots are filling from across the country — and beyond. Eight sessions. Three deployed AI products each — built around their actual businesses, not classroom exercises.

The layoff data and the hiring data from this week describe the same shift. Cohort 1 is for people who have decided which side of that shift they want to be on — and want to build the skills to stay there.

No coding background required. Download the curriculum to see exactly what you'd build.
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.
Forward this issue →
Free · Every Tuesday · makersquare.ai
MakerSquare
AI Builder Program · Austin, Texas

Recommended for you

© 2026 MakerSquare LLC.
beehiivPowered by beehiiv