AI Squawk

The week in AI for business leaders. Ramp's new data says AI spending has flattened even as usage climbs, so we look back at Revolut, Menlo Ventures and Apple's caps with that in mind. Then agents: Uber's four agent rides, Salesforce's Coworker claim and Perplexity's Teammates, next to a real project that counted every result. And what your AI tools can reach, from Postman and Claude Code to exposed AI hacking tools and Conductor's shutdown. North Wayne, who writes First Opinion, and Rex Factor, who writes Proof of Work, join us. Plus what to watch next week.This week's stories00:29 Ramp's data shows AI token spend grew just 1.5% across August and September while usage kept rising, and the median company spends $12 to $15 per employee a month. We revisit Revolut running its own model, Menlo's budget overruns and Apple's daily caps, plus OpenAI's $11 billion raise. North Wayne, who writes First Opinion, on using a buyer's market at renewal time and keeping caps people can ask to lift. (TechCrunch (Ramp), The Register (Revolut), Menlo Ventures, TechCrunch (Apple), TechCrunch (OpenAI))04:24 Uber saw just four rides booked by AI agents in its busiest week, Salesforce says Agentforce Coworker passed 185,000 users, and Perplexity's Teammates cost $200 a month. Rex Factor, who writes Proof of Work, on DoorDash's feature flag agents (45 of 50 done, about $4.79 each) and why counting finished jobs beats a user count. (VarOps, Proof of Work, TechCrunch (Uber), Salesforce, The Verge (Perplexity), Mistral)07:24 Claude Code's email fix still hadn't shipped by Saturday morning, the Palo Alto and Clutch deal is still only talks, and Censys found more than 800 Artex AI hacking tool deployments open on the internet. Make a list of every AI tool with access, update Claude Code, turn on multi factor login, and export from Conductor Cloud before it goes read only on 13 November and starts deleting data on 20 November. (GitHub issue, TechCrunch (Artex), TechCrunch (Clutch), Conductor)Watch next weekAnthropic's fix removing the account email from Claude Code's context, promised for early next week. (Hacker News)Anthropic's IPO: possibly as soon as the week before Thanksgiving (WSJ), with some buyers eyeing a much lower valuation (Bloomberg). (TechCrunch)Mistral's new managed agents and apps on your own servers or private cloud, planned for late November. (Mistral)---AI. For the people who can’t afford to guessAI Squawk is a daily AI news briefing for business leaders, produced by VarOps, the resident AI company. For more in-depth reads built on real data and hard-earned lessons from the trenches, sign up for the VarOps newsletters at VarOps.com ›More from VarOps:📚 Books🎙️ Podcasts🤖 Resident AI🔬 Research🤝 AI Transformations

Perplexity launches always-on AI Teammates at $200 a month, Claude Code was caught putting users' email addresses into web requests, and Palo Alto Networks is reportedly in talks to buy agent security startup Clutch for about $500 million. Gritt Scott, who writes Skill Issue, joins us on Perplexity. Plus four quick hits, and what each one means for you.Today's stories00:21 Perplexity's new always-on Teammates take separate jobs, run around the clock and work in Slack, but need the $200 a month Max plan. Gritt Scott, who writes Skill Issue, on testing one recurring job before paying for seats, and checking what it can read in Slack. (The Verge)02:29 A GitHub report says Claude Code put signed-in users' email addresses into User-Agent headers sent to third-party sites. Anthropic says a fix lands early next week; update to 2.1.317 or later now, and treat anything in an agent's context as something that can leave. (GitHub issue)03:49 TechCrunch reports Palo Alto Networks is in talks to buy Clutch Security, which secures AI agents' access to company systems, for about $500 million, roughly 50 times revenue. Start with a list of every agent and AI tool that can log into your systems. (TechCrunch)Quick hitsClaude Personal Finance connects bank accounts through Plaid, read only, in US beta. (TechCrunch)OpenAI releases GPT-6 Cyber to select Daybreak Red members for defensive security work. (The Verge, OpenAI)Airbnb says its own AI travel agent launches in the first half of 2027. (TechCrunch)Box builds Nvidia Nemotron embeddings into Box Content Retrieval for agents, early next year. (TechCrunch)---AI. For the people who can’t afford to guessAI Squawk is a daily AI news briefing for business leaders, produced by VarOps, the resident AI company. For more in-depth reads built on real data and hard-earned lessons from the trenches, sign up for the VarOps newsletters at VarOps.com ›More from VarOps:📚 Books🎙️ Podcasts🤖 Resident AI🔬 Research🤝 AI Transformations

Uber says only four rides were booked through an AI agent in Halloween week, Apple is cutting daily internal AI spending caps, and Salesforce claims Agentforce Coworker has 185,000 users at $50 a seat. Nix Nullty, who writes Overhyped, joins us on Uber. Plus four quick hits, and what each one means for you.Today's stories00:21 Uber said only four rides and about 500 Uber Eats orders came through AI agents in Halloween week, out of about 320 million trips. Nix Nullty, who writes Overhyped, on why agent commerce demos still outrun the receipts. (TechCrunch, The Verge)03:01 Bloomberg reports Apple cut some engineering daily AI caps from $300 to $200, with further cuts toward $100, and non-engineering possibly as low as $25. Apple declined comment. Set your own hard limit and a path for exceptions. (TechCrunch)04:33 Salesforce says Agentforce Coworker passed 185,000 users with 21x usage growth in three months, at $50 per user per month. Vendor numbers; pilot one measurable job before buying company-wide seats. (Salesforce)Quick hitsMeta acquires Conductor; cloud service shuts November 20 then deletes cloud data (TechCrunch)OpenAI to acquire Pierre Computer Company for Codex code review tooling (OpenAI)Google: measure cost per successful task; route easy work with cheap classifiers (Google Developers Blog)OpenAI Images 2.6 brings faster generation and GIFs to ChatGPT and the API (OpenAI)---AI. For the people who can’t afford to guessAI Squawk is a daily AI news briefing for business leaders, produced by VarOps, the resident AI company. For more in-depth reads built on real data and hard-earned lessons from the trenches, sign up for the VarOps newsletters at VarOps.com ›More from VarOps:📚 Books🎙️ Podcasts🤖 Resident AI🔬 Research🤝 AI Transformations

Revolut cuts its AI coding bill by about 90% by self-hosting an open-weight model, Menlo Ventures puts enterprise AI spending at $177B, and Postman installs plugins into developers' AI coding agents without asking. North Wayne, who writes First Opinion, joins us on Revolut. Plus four quick hits, and what each one means for you.Today's stories00:20 Revolut cuts its AI coding bill by about 90% by self-hosting an open-weight model for about 2,000 engineers. North Wayne, who writes First Opinion, on what the number leaves out and why it's still worth asking your vendors about. (The Register, AI Engineer)03:20 Menlo Ventures puts enterprise AI spending at $177B this year, and says companies spent 2.5 times what they budgeted. Menlo invests in Anthropic, so read it as a direction, then put your own spend next to your budget. (Menlo Ventures)05:00 Postman installed plugins into developers' Codex and Claude Code without asking, and says it will make the opt-in clearer. Find out what plugins and standing instructions your AI coding tools have, and who added them. (GitHub, RuntimeWire)Quick hitsPalantir's US commercial revenue passes US government revenue, on shorter contracts (TechCrunch)Salesforce agrees to buy Cresta, maker of voice agents for customer service (Salesforce)Google Meet admins can show a policy notice before Gemini records or takes notes (Google)Anthropic publishes FlashProve research on proving which model answered (Anthropic)---AI. For the people who can’t afford to guessAI Squawk is a daily AI news briefing for business leaders, produced by VarOps, the resident AI company. For more in-depth reads built on real data and hard-earned lessons from the trenches, sign up for the VarOps newsletters at VarOps.com ›More from VarOps:📚 Books🎙️ Podcasts🤖 Resident AI🔬 Research🤝 AI Transformations

AI Squawk is a short daily briefing on the AI news that matters to business leaders, every weekday, without the hype. It launches in November, so follow the show now to get the first episode.---AI. For the people who can’t afford to guessAI Squawk is a daily AI news briefing for business leaders, produced by VarOps, the resident AI company. For more in-depth reads built on real data and hard-earned lessons from the trenches, sign up for the VarOps newsletters at VarOps.com ›More from VarOps:📚 Books🎙️ Podcasts🤖 Resident AI🔬 Research🤝 AI Transformations