Ever since the New York Times acquired Wordle and went all-in on games, there's been something of a slow-brewing arms race in the space. The Times continues to release new games, and it's now up against intriguing competitors like Puzzmo, Netflix, The Atlantic, and even LinkedIn, while established games like Words With Friends have adjusted their offerings in response. Also in that mix is Apple News Plus, which just launched a game that's a bit like Wordle crossed with emoji.

It's called simply Emoji Game, and each day you're presented with three phrases, which have some letters filled in, but are mostly blank. There's a partial hint as to …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Hello, and welcome to Decoder! I’m Alex Heath, deputy editor at The Verge and author of the Command Line newsletter. I’m hosting our Thursday episodes while Nilay is out on parental leave.

Today, we’re talking about how AI is changing the way we use the web. If you’re like me, you’re probably already using apps like ChatGPT to search for things, but lately I’ve become very interested in the future of the web browser itself. 

That brings me to my guest today: Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, who is betting that the browser is where more useful AI will get built. His company just released Comet, an AI web browser for Mac and Windows that’s still in an invite-only beta. I’ve been using it, and it’s very interesting. 

Aravind isn’t alone here: OpenAI is working on its own web browser, and then there are other AI native web browsers out there like Dia. Google, meanwhile, may be forced to spin off Chrome if the US Department of Justice prevails in its big antitrust case. If that happens, it could provide an opening for startups like Perplexity to win market share and fundamentally change how people interact with the web. 

In this conversation, Aravind and I also discussed Perplexity’s future, the AI talent wars, and why he thinks people will eventually pay thousands of dollars for a single AI prompt. 

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Alright, Aravind, before we get into Comet and how it works, I actually want to go back to our last conversation in April for my newsletter Command Line. We were talking about why you were doing this, and you told me at the time that the reason we’re doing the browser is, “It might be the best way to build agents.” 

That idea has stuck with me since then, and I think it’s been validated by others and some other recent launches. But before we get into things, can you just expand on that idea: Why do you think the browser is actually the route to an AI agent?

Sure. What is an AI agent? Let’s start from there. A rough description of what people want out of an AI agent is something that can actually go and do stuff for you. It’s very vague, obviously, just like how an AI chatbot is vague by definition. People just want it to respond to anything. The same thing is true for agents. It should be able to carry out any workflow end to end, from instruction to actual completion of the task. Then you boil that down to what does it actually need to do it? It needs context. It needs to pull in context from your third-party apps. It needs to go and take actions on those third-party apps on your behalf.

So you need logged in versions of your third-party apps. You need to access your data from those third-party apps, but do it in a way where it doesn’t actually constantly ask you to auth again and again. It doesn’t actually need your permission to do a lot of the things. At the same time, you can take over it and complete the things when it’s not able to do it because no AI agent is foolproof, especially when we are at a time when reasoning models are still far from perfection. 

So you want this one interface that the agent and the human can both operate in the same manner: their logins are actually seamless, client-side data is easy to use, and controlling it is pretty natural, and nothing’s going to truly be damaging if something doesn’t work. You can still take over from the agent and complete it when you feel like it’s not able to do it. What is that environment in which this can be done in the most straightforward way without creating virtual servers with all your logins and having users worry about privacy and stuff like that? It’s the browser.

Everything can live on the client side, everything can stay secure. It only accesses information that it needs to complete the task in the literal same way you access those websites yourself, so that way you get to understand what the agent is doing. It’s not like a black box. You get full transparency and visibility, and you can just stop the agent when you feel like it’s going off the rails and just complete the task yourself, and you can also have the agent ask for your permission to do anything. So that level of control, transparency, trust in an environment that we are used to for multiple decades, which is the browser — such a familiar front end to introduce a new concept of AI is going and doing things for you — makes perfect sense for us to reimagine the browser.

How did you go about building Comet? When I first opened it, it felt familiar. It felt like Chrome, and my understanding is that it’s built on Chromium, the open-source substrate of Chrome that Google maintains, and that allows you to have a lot of easy data importing. 

I was struck when I first opened it that it only took one click to basically bring all my context from Chrome over to Comet, even my extensions. So, why decide to go that route of building Comet on Chromium versus doing something fully from scratch?

First of all, Chromium is a great contribution to the world. Most of the things they did on reimagining tabs as processes and the way they’ve gone about security, encryption, and just the performance, the core back-end performance of Chromium as an engine, rendering engines that they have, is all really good. There’s no need to reinvent that. And at the same time, it’s an open-source project, so it’s easy to hire developers for Perplexity. They can work on the Comet browser, especially if it’s something that has open standards, and we want to continue contributing to Chromium also. 

So we don’t want to just consume Chromium and build a product out of it, but we actually want to give back to the ecosystem. So that’s natural. And the second thing is, it’s the dominant browser right now.Chrome, and almost if you actually include Edge — which is also a Chromium fork — DuckDuckGo, Brave, they’re all Chromium forks, only Safari’s based on WebKit. So, it’s actually the dominant browser and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. 

In terms of UI, we felt like it would be better to retain the most familiar UI people are already used to, which honestly is the Chrome UI. And Safari is a slightly different UI and some people like it, some people do not, and it’s still a much smaller share of the market. And imports need to work, otherwise you’re going to be like, ‘Oh, this is not working, oh, that thing doesn’t have all my personal contacts, I’m missing out on it. I don’t want to go through the friction of logging into all the apps again.’ 

I think that that was very important for us for the onboarding step, which is not only onboarding you as a human but also onboarding the AI. Because the moment you’re already logged into all the third-party apps that you are logged in on Chrome in the exact same security standards, the agent gets access to that on your client and can immediately show you the magic of the product.

And the agent is seeing it, but you, Perplexity, are not. You’re not using all of the Chrome data I instantly bring over to train on me or anything like that?

No. The agent only sees it when you ask a relevant prompt. For example, ‘Based on what I’ve ordered on Amazon in the last month, recommend me some new supplements’ or, ‘Go and order the magnesium supplement that I’ve already ordered frequently on Amazon.’ The agent only sees that for that one singular prompt and doesn’t actually store your entire Amazon history on our servers, and you can always ensure that your prompts get deleted from our servers. 

So, even the prompts we can choose not to look at, even for fine-tuning purposes. Let’s say we want to make our agents good at an aggregate or like, users have done Amazon shopping queries, let’s go and make it better on that. We don’t even need to look at that if you choose to not retain your prompt. So that’s the level of privacy and security we want to offer.

At the same time, the frontier intelligence is all on the server side. This is one of the main reasons why Apple is struggling to ship all Apple Intelligence being on iOS or macOS or whatever, because I think there’s generally an expectation that everything needs to live on the client side. That’s not necessary to be private. You can still be pretty secure and private with frontier intelligence on the server. So that’s the architecture we brought in on Comet.

We are talking now a couple of weeks or so after Comet came out and it’s still invite-only — or I think it’s also restricted to your premium tier, your $200 a month tier — but you’ve been tweeting a lot of examples of how people have been using it. They’ve been using it to make Facebook ads, do FedEx customer support chat, run their smart home accessories, make Facebook marketplace listings, schedule calendar meetings, there’s been a lot of stuff that you’ve shown. 

Unsubscribing from spam emails, which is a favorite use case of a lot of people.

So maybe that’s the one. But I was going to say, what has been the main use case you’ve seen so far that people are finding with Comet?

Actually, while these are the more glamorous use cases, I would say the boring dominant one is always invoking the sidecar and having it do stuff for you on the webpage you’re on. Not necessarily just simple summarization, but more complex questions. Let’s say I’m watching Alex Heath’s podcast with Zuckerberg or something and I want to know specifically what he said about a topic, and I want to take that and send it as a message to my teammates on Slack. 

I think that’s the thing, you can just invoke the assistant on the site and do it instantly. It’s connected to your Gmail, your calendar. It’s also able to pull the transcript from the YouTube video. It has fine-grain access, and it’s immediately able to retrieve the relevant snippet. I can even ask it to play it from that exact timestamp instead of going through the entire transcript, like whatever I want. That is the level of advantage you have.

It almost feels like you should never watch a YouTube video standalone anymore unless you have a lot of time on your hands, and it’s fantastic. And people use it for LinkedIn. Honestly, searching over LinkedIn is very hard. It doesn’t have a working search engine, basically. So the agent figures out all these shortcuts, like how we figure out using these filters — people search, a connection search — and it’s able to give recruiting power that was never possible before. I would say it’s better than using LinkedIn Premium.

I’m glad you brought up the sidecar because for people who haven’t tried it or seen it, that is the main way Comet diverts from Chrome, is that you’ve got this AI assistant orchestration layer that sits on the side of a webpage that you can use to interact with the webpage and also just go off and do things. 

That interface suggests that you see the web as being less about actually browsing. You just said no one really has time to watch a YouTube video and more about an action interface. Is the browsing part of the browser becoming less meaningful in the world of AI is what I’m wondering?

I think people are still going to watch YouTube videos for fun or exploration. But when I’m actually landing at a video — you do a lot of intellectual stuff, so it’s not always fun to watch the entire thing — but I like watching specific things in the video. And also, by the way, when I’m in the middle of work, I can’t be watching The Verge podcast. I want to instantly know what Zuckerberg might have said in your video about their cluster or something, and then on the weekend, I can go back and watch the entire thing. I might have a lot more time on my hands, so it’s not actually going to stop the regular browsing. 

I actually think people are going to scroll through social platforms or watch Netflix or YouTube even more, I would say, because they have more time on their hands. The AI is going to do a lot of their work. It’s just that they would choose to spend it on entertainment more than intellectual work, so intellectual browsing. Or if people derive entertainment from intellectual stuff like intellectual entertainment, I think that’s fine, too.

Like reading books, all these things are fine, like reading blog posts that you otherwise wouldn’t get time to read when you’re in the middle of work. I think these are the kind of ways in which we want the browser to evolve where people launch a bunch of Comet assistant jobs, like tasks that would take a few minutes to complete in the background and they’re chilling and scrolling through X or whatever social media they like.

Your tagline for Comet is enabling people to “Browse at the speed of thought.” I find that there’s actually a very steep learning curve to understanding what it can do. 

By the way, Alex, I want to make one point. There was some article either from The Verge or somewhere else that Google was trying to use Gemini to predict maximal engagement time on a YouTube video and show the ad around that timestamp. Perplexity on the Comet browser was using AI to exactly save your time, to get you the exact timestamp you want on a fine-grain basis and not waste your time. So often people ask, why would Google not do this and that? The incentives are completely different here.

And I want to get into that and I have a lot of business model questions about Comet because it is also very compute intensive for you and expensive to run, which you’ve talked about. But to my point about the learning curve and making it approachable, how do you do that? Because when I first opened it, it’s kind of like I don’t know what I can do with this thing. I mean, I go to your X account and I see all the things you’re sharing. But I do think there’s going to be a learning curve that the people building these products don’t necessarily appreciate.

No, no, I appreciate that and it’s been the thing for me, myself as a user is that even though it’s fun to build all these agent use cases, it takes a while to stop doing things the usual way and start using the AIs more, which includes even basic things like what reply you type onto an email thread. Even though Google has these automatic suggested replies, I don’t actually usually like it and it doesn’t often pull context from outside Gmail to help me do that. Or like checking on unread Slack messages. I usually just go open Slack as a tab and try to scroll through those 50, 100 channels I’m on, clicking each of those channels, reading all the messages that are unread. It takes time to actually train myself to use Comet. So what we plan to do is actually publish a lot of the early use cases on educational material and have it be widely accessible.

I think it’s going to go through the same trajectory that chatbots had. I think in the beginning when ChatGPT was launched, I’m sure not a lot of people knew how to use it. What are all the ways in which you could take advantage of it? In fact, I still don’t think people really… It’s not really a widespread thing. There are some people who really know how to use these AI tools very well and most people have used it at least once or twice a week, and they don’t actually use it in their day-to-day workflows.

The browser is going to go through a similar trajectory, but on the other hand, the one use case that’s been very natural, very intuitive that you don’t even have to teach people how to use this is the sidecar. It’s just picked up so much that I feel like it’ll be so intuitive. It’ll almost be like, without the sidecar, why am I using the browser anymore? That’s how it’s going to feel.

It does quickly make the traditional chatbot, the Perplexity or ChatGPT interface, feel a little arcane when you have the sidecar with the webpage.

Exactly, a lot of people are using ChatGPT for… You’re on an email and you want to know how to respond, so you copy / paste a bunch of context. You go there, you ask it to do something, and then you copy / paste it back. You edit it finally in your Gmail box or you do it in your Google Sheets or Google Docs. Comet is just going to feel much more intuitive. You have it right there on the side and you can do your edits, or you’re using it to draft a tweet, or Elon Musk posts something and you want to post a funny response to that. You can literally ask Comet, ‘Hey, draft me a funny reply tweet to that,’ and it’ll automatically have it ready for you. You literally have to click the post button.

All that stuff is going to definitely reduce the amount of times you really open another tab and keep asking the AI. And firing up jobs right from your current website to go pull up relevant context for you and having it just come back and push notify you when it’s ready, that’s feeling like another level of delegation.

Where is Comet struggling based on the early data you’ve seen?

It’s definitely not perfect yet for long-horizon tasks, something that might take 15 minutes or something. I’ll give you some examples. Like I want a list of engineers who have studied at Stanford and also worked at Anthropic. They don’t have to be currently working at Anthropic, but they must have worked at Anthropic at least once. I want you to give me an exhaustive list of people like that ported over to Google Sheets with their LinkedIn URLs, and I want you to go to ZoomInfo and try to get me their email so that I can reach out to them. I also want you to bulk draft personalized cold emails to each of them to reach out to for a coffee chat. 

I don’t think Comet can do this today. It can do parts of it, so you still have to be the orchestrator stitching them together. I’m pretty sure six months to a year from now, it can do the entire thing.

You think it happens that quickly?

I’m betting on progress in reasoning models to get us there. Just like how in 2022, we bet on models like GPT-4 and Claude 3.5 Sonnet to arrive to make the hallucination problem in Perplexity basically nonexistent when you have a good index and a good model. I’m betting on the fact that in the right environment of a browser with access to all these tabs and tools, a sufficiently good reasoning model — like slightly better, maybe GPT-5, maybe like Claude 4.5, I don’t know — could get us over the edge where all these things are suddenly possible and then a recruiter’s work worth one week is just one prompt: sourcing and reach outs. And then you’ve got to do state tracking.

It’s not just about doing this one task, but you want it to keep following up, keep a track of their responses. If some people respond, go and update the Google Sheets, mark the status as responded or in progress and follow up with those candidates, sync with my Google calendar, and then resolve conflicts and schedule a chat, and then push me a brief ahead of the meeting. Some of these things should be proactive. It doesn’t even have to be a prompt.

That’s the extent to which we have an ambition to make the browser into something that feels more like an OS where these are processes that are running all the time. And it’s not going to be easy to do all this today, but in general, we have been successful at identifying the sweet spots where things that are currently on the edge of working and we nail those use cases, get the early adopters to love the product, and then ride the wave of progress and reasoning models. That’s been the strategy.

I’m not sure if it’s just the reasoning models or it’s just the product’s early or I haven’t figured out how to use it correctly. My experience—

It’s not like I’m saying everything will work out of the box with a new model. You really have to know how to harness the capabilities and have the right evals and version control the prompts and do any post-training of auxiliary models, which is basically our expertise. We are very good at these things.

I would say that based on — and I’ll caveat that I haven’t spent weeks yet with it — but based on my early experience with it, I would describe it as a little brittle or unpredictable in terms of the success rate. I asked it to take me to the booking page for a very specific flight that I wanted and it did it. It took me to the page and it filled in some stuff, whereas the normal Perplexity or ChatGPT interface would just take me to the webpage. It actually took me a little bit further. It didn’t book it, but it took me further, which was good.

But then I asked it like, “Create a list of everyone who follows me on X that works at Meta,” and it gave me one person, and I know for a fact there’s many more than that. Or for example, I said, “Find my last interview with the CEO of Perplexity,” and it said it couldn’t, but then it showed a source link to the interview, so the answer said it but the source didn’t. I see some brittleness in the product and I know it’s early, but I’m just wondering is all of that just bugs or is that anything inherent in the models or the way you’ve architected it?

I can take a look at it if you can share the link with me, but I would say the majority of the advertised use cases that we ourselves advertised are things that are expected to work. Now, will it always 100 percent of the time work in a deterministic way? No. Are we going to get there in a matter of months? I think so, and you have to be timing yourself where you’re not exactly waiting for the moment where everything works reliably. You want to be a little early, you want to be a little edgy, and I think there are some people who just love feeling being part of the ride, too.

The majority of the users are going to wait until everything works stable, so that’s why we think the sidecar is already a value add for those kinds of people where they don’t have to use the agents that much. They can use the sidecar, they can use Gmail, they can use calendar connectors, they can use all those LinkedIn search features, YouTube, or just basic stuff like searching over your own history. These are things that already work well and this is already a massive value add over Chrome. And once several minutes’ worth of long-horizon tasks start working reliably, that’s going to make it feel more than just a browser. That’s when you make it feel like an OS. You want everything in that one container, and you’ll feel like the rest of the computer doesn’t even matter.

We started this conversation talking about how you think the browser gives you this context to be able to create an actually useful agent, and there’s this other technical path that the industry is looking at and getting excited about, which is MCP, model context protocol. And at a high level, it’s just this orchestration layer that lets an LLM talk to Airtable, Google Docs, whatever, and do things on your behalf in the same way that Comet is doing that in the sidecar. 

You’re going at this problem through the browser and through the logged-in state of the browser that you talked about and that shortcut, while a lot of people — Anthropic and others, OpenAI — are looking at MCP as maybe the way that agents actually get built at scale. I’m curious what you think of those two paths, and are you just very bearish on MCP or do you think MCP is for other kinds of companies?

I’m not extremely bearish on MCP. I just want it to mature more, and I don’t want to wait. I want to ship agents right now. I feel like AI as a community, as an industry has just been talking about agents for the last two years and no one’s actually shipped anything that worked. And I got tired of that and we felt like the browser is a great way to do that today.

MCP is going to definitely play a contributing factor to the field in the next five years. There’s still a lot of security issues they need to figure out there. Having your authentication tokens communicated from your client to an MCP server or from a remote MCP server to another client, all these things are pretty risky today, way more risky than just having your persistent logins on your client on the browser. The same issues exist with OpenAI’s Operator, which tries to create server-side versions of all your apps. 

I think there’s going to be some good MCP connectors that we’ll definitely integrate with Linear or Notion. I guess GitHub has an MCP connector. So whenever it makes sense to use those over an agent that just opens these tabs and scrolls through them and clicks on things, we’re going to use that. But it’s always going to be bottlenecked by how well these servers are maintained and how you orchestrate these agents to use the protocol in the right way. It doesn’t solve the search problem on those servers, by the way. You still have to go and figure out what data to retrieve. 

You define it as the orchestration layer. It’s not the orchestration layer, it’s just a protocol for communicating between servers and the client, or one server or another server. But it’s still not solving the problem of reasoning and knowing what information to extract and knowing what actions to take and all that chaining together different steps, trying things when things don’t work. Whereas the browser is basically something that’s been designed for humans to actually operate in, and extracting a DOM and knowing what actions to take seems to be something that these models, the reasoning models, seem to be pretty good at.

So we are going to do a hybrid approach and see what works best. In the end, it has to be fast, it has to be reliable, and it has to be cheap. So if MCP lets us do that better than the browsing agent, then we’ll do that. There’s no dogmatic mission here.

At The Verge, we care a lot about the way our website looks and feels, the art of it, the visual experience, and with all this agent talk and it collapsing into browsers, I’m curious what you think happens to the web and to websites that devote a lot to making their sites actually interesting to browse. Does the web just become a series of databases that agents are crawling through MCP or whatever and this entire economy of the web goes away?

No. I actually think if you have a brand, people are going to be interested in knowing what that brand thinks, and it might go to you, the individual, or it might go to Verge, or it might go to both. It doesn’t matter. So even within Verge, I might not be interested in articles written by some other people. I might be interested in specific people who have data content or something. So I think the brand will play an even bigger role in a world where both AIs and humans are surfing the web, and so I don’t think it’s going to go away. Maybe the traffic for you might not even come organically. It might come through social media. Let’s say you publish a new article, some people might come click on it through Instagram or X or LinkedIn. It doesn’t matter.

And whether it would be possible for a new platform to build traffic from scratch by just doing the good old SEO tricks, I’m actually bearish on that. It’s going to be difficult to create your own presence by just playing the old playbook. You’ve got to build your brand through a different manner in this time period, and the existing ones who are lucky enough to already have a big brand presence, they have to maintain the brand also with a different playbook, not just doing SEO or traditional search engine growth tactics.

On Comet as a business, it’s very compute-intensive and it’s still invite-only. I imagine you wish you could just throw the gates open and let anyone use it, but it would melt your servers or your AWS bills, right? So how do you scale this thing? Not only do you scale it from the product sense and it becomes a thing that normal people can easily use and understand that curve of learning it that we talked about, but also just the business of it. You’re not profitable, you’re venture-backed, you have to make money one day, you have to be profitable. How do you scale something like this that is actually even more compute-intensive than a chatbot?

I think if the reliability of these agents gets good enough, you could imagine people paying usage-based pricing. You might not be part of the max subscription tier of $200 a month or anything, but there’s one task you really desperately want to get done and you don’t want to spend three hours doing that, and as long as the agent actually completes and you’re satisfied with the response rate, the success rate, you’ll be okay with trusting the agent to paying an advance fee of $20 for the recruiting task I described, like give me all the Stanford alumni who worked at Anthropic. 

I think that is a very interesting way of thinking about it, which is otherwise going to cost you a lot more time or you have to hire a sourcing consultant, or you have to hire a full-time sourcer whose only job is that. If you value your time, you’re going to pay for it.

Maybe let me give you another example. You want to put an ad on Meta, Instagram, and you want to look at ads done by similar brands, pull that, study that, or look at the AdWords pricing of a hundred different keywords and figure out how to price your thing competitively. These are tasks that could definitely save you hours and hours and maybe even give you an arbitrage over what you could do yourself, because AI is able to do a lot more. And at scale, if it helps you to make a few million bucks, does it not make sense to spend $2,000 for that prompt? It does, right? So I think we’re going to be able to monetize in many more interesting ways than chatbots for the browser.

It’s still early, but the signs of life are already there in terms of what kind of use cases people have. And if you map reduce your cognitive labor in bulk to an AI that goes and does it reliably, it almost becomes like your personal AWS cluster with natural language-described tasks. And I think we have to execute on it, but if we do execute on it and if the reasoning models are continuing to work well, you could imagine something that feels more like Cloud Code for life. And Cloud Code is a product that people are paying $1,000 a month also because, even though it’s expensive, it helps you maybe get a promotion faster because you’re getting more work done and your salary goes up, and it feels like the ROI is there.

Are you betting so much on the browser for the next chapter of Perplexity because the traditional chatbot race has just been completely won by ChatGPT? Is Perplexity as it exists today going away and the future of it is just going to be Comet?

I wouldn’t say that I’m betting on it because the chatbot race is over. Let me decouple the two things. The chatbot race does seem like it’s over in the sense that it’s very unlikely that people think of another product for day-to-day chat. From the beginning, we never competed in that market. We were always competing on search. We were trying to reimagine search in the conversational style. Yes, every chatbot has search integrations. Some people like that, some people still like a more search-like interface that we have, so we never wanted to go after that market and we are not competing there either. Google is trying to catch up and Grok’s trying to catch up, Meta’s trying to catch up, but I feel like all that is wasted labor in my opinion at this point.

But the way I would phrase it is the browser is bigger than chat. It’s a more sticky product, and it’s the only way to build agents. It’s the only way to build end-to-end workflows. It’s the only way to build true personalization, memory, and context. And so it’s a bigger price in my opinion than trying to nail the chat game, especially in a market that’s so fragmented. And it’s a much harder problem to crack, too, in terms of intelligence, how you package it, how you context engineer it, how you deal with all the shortcomings at the current moment, as well as end-user-facing UX — which could be the front end, the back end, the security, the privacy, and all the other bugs that you’ get to deal with when working with a much more multifaceted product like the browser.

Do you think that’s why OpenAI is going to be releasing a browser? Because they agree with that?

I don’t know if they are. I’ve read the same leaks that you have, and it was very interesting it came two hours after we launched. You also made another point about Perplexity being ignored and Comet being the next thing. I don’t see it that way because you cannot build a browser without a search. A lot of people praised the Comet browser because it doesn’t feel like another browser. You know why? One of the main reasons is, of course we have the sidecar and we have the agent and all that, but the default search is Perplexity. And we made it in a way where even if you’re having an intent to navigate, it’ll understand that.

It’ll give you four or five links if it feels like it’s a navigational query, it’ll give you images pretty quickly. It’ll give you a very short answer also, so you can combine informational queries or navigational queries, agent queries in one single search box. That is only doable if you actually are working on the search problem, which we’ve been working on since the last two and a half years. So I would say I don’t see it as two separate things. Basically, you cannot build a product like Chrome without building Google. Similarly, you cannot build a product like Comet without building Perplexity.

So is there a Comet standalone mobile app and a standalone Perplexity app?

Yeah, there will be standalone apps for both. Some people are going to use the standalone Comet app just like how they use Chrome or Safari, and it’s okay. They probably won’t do that because it’s going to have an AI that you can talk to on every webpage, including in voice mode actually. But you still want to just navigate and get to a website quickly. I just want to go and browse Verge without actually having any question in my mind, that’s fine. And I could go to Perplexity and have all the other things the app has like Discover feeds and Spaces and just quick, fast answers without the web interface. That’s fine, too. 

We are going to support a packaged version of the browser Comet within the Perplexity app, just like how the Google app still supports navigation like Chrome. So, by the way, both the Google app and the Chrome app are WebKit apps on iOS. Similarly, both the Google app and the Chrome app are Chromium apps on Android. We’ll have to follow the same trajectory.

Speaking of competition, I’m curious what you think of Dia, what The Browser Company has done. They released it around the same time as you, they’re moving in this direction as well. Obviously they’re a smaller startup, but they got a lot of buzz with Arc, their original browser, and now seem to be betting on the same idea that you have with Comet. I’m curious if you’ve gotten to try it or how you think it will stack up against Comet.

I haven’t tried it myself. I’ve seen what other people have said. I think they have some interesting ideas on the visuals on the front end. And if I were them, I would’ve just tried it in the same browser they had instead of going and trying to build distribution on a new one. But yeah, it’s interesting. We are definitely going to study every product out there. Our focus, though, more goes on Chrome. It is the big brother. And the way I think about it is even if I take 1 percent of the Chrome users, set their default as Comet, that’s a massive, massive win for us and a massive loss for them, too, by the way, because any ad revenue lost is massive at that scale.

Is word of mouth the main way you’re going to grow Comet or are you looking for distribution partnerships beyond that?

In the beginning, we’re going to do more word of mouth growth. It’s very powerful. It’s worked out well for us in the past with Perplexity itself, and we’re going to try to follow the same trajectory here. And luckily we have an installed base of Perplexity already of 30 to 40 million people. So even if we get a good chunk of those people to try out Comet and convert some of those people who tried it into setting it as default, it’ll already be a massive victory without relying on any distribution partnerships. 

And then we’re obviously going to try seeing how to convert that progress into a partnership like Google has with a bunch of people. I just want to caveat that by saying it’s going to be extremely hard. We’ve spoken about this in the past where Google makes sure every Android phone has Google Chrome as a default browser and you cannot change that.

You lose a lot of money if you change that. And Microsoft makes sure every Windows laptop is coming with Edge as the default browser. Again, you cannot change that. You will lose a lot of money if you change that. Now the next step is okay, let them be the default browser, at least can you have your app as part of the Android or Windows build? You still cannot change that easily. Especially on Windows, it’s basically pretty impossible to convince large OEMs to change that. So they have all these agreements that are several years locked in, and you work with companies that plan for the device that they’re shipping two years in advance. 

That’s their mode in some sense. It’s not even the product, it’s not even exactly in the distribution world, it’s more in the legalities of how they crafted these agreements, which is why I’m happy that the DOJ is at least looking into Google. And we’ve made a list of recommendations on that, and I hope something happens there.

Yeah, it may have forced a spinoff of Chrome, which would be really interesting and reset things. There’s a lot of people that think Apple should buy you. And Eddy Cue, one of their top execs, actually had some pretty nice things to say about you on the stand when he was there during the Google trial and said that you guys had talked about working together. Obviously you can’t talk about something that hasn’t been announced yet, especially with Apple, but yeah, what do you make of that and Apple?

I mean, I’m firstly honored by Eddy mentioning us in the trial as a product that he likes, and he’s heard from his circles that people like it. I would love to work with Apple on integrations with Safari or Siri or Apple Intelligence. It’s the one product that almost everybody loves using or it’s a status symbol. Everybody wants to graduate using an Apple device. 

So I’m pretty sure that we share a lot of design aesthetics in terms of how we do things and how they do things. At the same time, my goal is to make Perplexity as big as possible. It’s definitely possible that this browser is so platform-agnostic that it can benefit Android and iOS ecosystems, Windows and Mac ecosystems, and we can be pretty big on our own just like Google was. Of course, Google owns Android, but you could imagine they would’ve been pretty successful if they just had the best search engine and the best browser and they didn’t actually own the platform either.

I and others also reported that Mark Zuckerberg approached you about potentially joining Meta and working on his reboot of their AI efforts. What was Zuck’s pitch? I’m curious. Tell me.

Zuck is awesome. He’s doing a lot of awesome things, and I think Meta has such a sticky product. It’s fantastic, and we look at that as an example of how it’s possible to build a large business without having any platform yourself.

Were you shocked by the numbers that Zuck is paying for top AI research? These nine-figure compensation offers. I think a lot of them are actually tied to Meta stock needing to increase for those numbers to be paid. So it’s actually pretty contingent on the business and not just guaranteed payouts, but still huge numbers.

Yeah, huge. And definitely, I was surprised by the magnitude of the numbers. Seems like it’s needed at this point for them, but at the same time, Elon and xAI have shown you don’t need to spend that much to train models competitive with OpenAI and Anthropic. So I don’t know if money alone solves every problem here. 

You do need to have a team that works well together, has a proper mission alignment and milestones, and in some sense, failure is not an option for them. The amount of investment is so big and I feel like the way Zuck probably thinks is, ‘I’m going to get all the people, I’m going to get all the compute and I’m going to get all the milestones set up for you guys, but now it’s all on you to execute and if you fail, it’s going to look pretty bad on me so you better not fail.’ That’s probably the deal.

What are the second order effects to the AI talent market, do you think, after Zuck’s hiring spree?

I mean, it’s definitely going to feel like a transfer market now, right? Like an NBA or something. There’s going to be a few individual stars who are having so much leverage. And one thing I’ve noticed is Anthropic researchers are not the ones getting poached.

Mostly. He has poached some, but not as many.

Yeah. So it does feel like that’s something labs need to work on, which is truly aligning people on one mission. That money alone is not the motivator for them. And as the company, your company’s doing well, the stock is going up and you feel dopamine from working there every day. You’re encountering new kinds of challenges, you feel a lot of growth, you’re learning new things, and you’re getting richer, too, along the way. Why would you want to go?

Do you think strongly about getting Perplexity to profitability to be able to control your own destiny, so to speak?

Definitely, it’s inevitable. We want to do it before the IPO and we think we can IPO in 2028 or 9. I would like to IPO, by the way, just to be clear. I don’t want to stay private forever like some of the companies have chosen to do so. Even though it gives you advantages in M&As and decision-making power, I do think the publicity and the marketing you get from an IPO and the fact that people can finally invest in a search alternative to Google is a pretty massive opportunity for us to IPO. 

But I don’t think it makes sense to IPO before hitting $1 billion in revenue and some profitability along the way. So that’s definitely something we want to get to in the next four or three years. But I don’t want to stunt our own growth and not be aggressive and try new things today.

Makes sense. So, you launched Perplexity, and it’s crazy that it’s already been just over three years now, and it was right around when ChatGPT first launched. It’s wild to think about everything we’ve talked about and that all this has happened in barely three years. So maybe this is an impossible question, but I want to leave you with this question. If you look out three years from now, you just talked about the IPO, which is interesting, but what does Perplexity look like three years from now?

I hope it becomes the one tool you think of when you want to actually get anything done. And it has a lot of deep connection to you because it synchronizes with all your context and proactively thinks on your behalf and truly makes your life a lot easier.

Alright, we’ll leave it there. Aravind, thanks. 

Thank you.

_{Questions or comments about this episode? Hit us up at [email protected]. We really do read every email!}

Shadow Labyrinth didn't make the best first impression, though I'm not talking about the game itself. The concept of a gritty reboot of Pac-Man first reared its strange head in Secret Level, an anthology that turned notable video games into animated shorts that mostly felt like extended commercials. And that's exactly what the episode "Circle," which reimagined Pac-Man as a blood-soaked survival story, turned out to be. But as off-putting as the episode was, it turns out that the premise actually works for a Metroid-style action game.

For those who didn't watch Secret Level, Shadow Labyrinth puts you in the role of an unnamed, hooded swordm …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Sony's new RX1R III camera looks awesome. Hardcore photo enthusiasts have wanted an updated version of its full-frame compact camera, the RX1, for nearly a decade. I'm not surprised it costs a whopping $5,100 (cameras and lenses have been trending more expensive), but what I do find surprising, and quite egregious, is that the RX1R III lost the tiltable screen of its predecessor. Its rear LCD is fixed in place, which is a real blow to the street photographers and shooters who like the added convenience of easier from-the-hip or overhead angles.

The designers at Sony obviously went to great lengths to maintain similar dimensions to the last- …

Read the full story at The Verge.

A24 is known for its prestige arthouse films, but in its early days as a distributor, it made most of its money from elevated horror films like Ari Aster's Hereditary and Midsommar. Over a decade in, the ambitions of A24 and Aster have expanded beyond genre film. But for both, the more recent results have been mixed.

Eddington, Aster's latest, feels like a continuation of the maximalist guilt-trip Beau Is Afraid. Joaquin Phoenix stars once again, though the concerns here are less Jewish and Oedipal and more wokeness and conspiracy theories. It's grounded in the contemporary: the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically. The movie's …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Adobe is launching new generative AI filmmaking tools that provide fun ways to create sound effects and control generated video outputs. Alongside the familiar text prompts that typically allow you to describe what Adobe’s Firefly AI models should make or edit, users can now use onomatopoeia-like voice recordings to generate custom sounds, and use reference footage to guide the movements in Firefly-generated videos.

The Generate Sound Effects tool that’s launching in beta on the Firefly app can be used with recorded and generated footage, and provides greater control over audio generation than Google’s Veo 3 video tool. The interface resembles a video editing timeline and allows users to match the effects they create in time with uploaded footage. For example, users can play a video of a horse walking along a road and simultaneously record “clip clop” noises in time with its hoof steps, alongside a text description that says “hooves on concrete.” The tool will then generate four sound effect options to choose from.

This builds on the Project Super Sonic experiment that Adobe showed off at its Max event in October. It doesn’t work for speech, but does support the creation of impact sounds like twigs snapping, footsteps, zipper effects, and more, as well as atmospheric noises like nature sounds and city ambience.

New advanced controls are also coming to the Firefly Text-to-Video generator. Composition Reference allows users to upload a video alongside their text prompt to mirror the composition of that footage in the generated video, which should make it easier to achieve specific results, compared to repeatedly inputting text descriptions alone. Keyframe cropping will let users crop and upload images of the first and last frames that Firefly can use to generate video between, and new style presets provide a selection of visual styles that users can quickly select, including anime, vector art, claymation, and more.

These style presets are only available to use with Adobe’s own Firefly video AI model. The results leave something to be desired if the live demo I saw was any indication — the “claymation” option just looked like early 2000s 3D animation. But Adobe is continuing to add support for rival AI models within its own tools, and Adobe’s Generative AI lead Alexandru Costin told The Verge that similar controls and presets may be available to use with third-party AI models in the future. That suggests that Adobe is vying to keep its place at the top of the creative software foodchain as AI tools grow in popularity, even if it lags behind the likes of OpenAI and Google in the generative models themselves.

Dyson is expanding the range of ear caps and cushions it offers for its customizable OnTrac headphones, with two new colors launching today for each. That doesn’t change the four default designs you’re able to pick from when buying the $499.99 OnTracs, but it does give existing owners new options to mix up the design.

The cushions now come in “Sky Blue,” which was already available for ear caps, and “Caramel,” which is entirely new. Meanwhile, the caps are now available in “Ceramic Oyster Pink,” previously exclusive to the cushions, and an all-new “Ceramic Chalk White.” Replacement sets of caps and cushions are available from Dyson’s site for $49.99.

The OnTrac headphones launched in July 2024, a more practical follow-up to the ill-fated Zone, which combined over-ear headphones with a Bane-esque air purifying mask. The customizable design is the main way the OnTracs are differentiated from rivals like Apple’s AirPods Max or the Sony WH-1000XM6, and the new colors mean there are now ten different sets of ear caps to choose from, and nine pairs of cushions.

Uber plans to make “multi-hundred-million dollar investments” in both Nuro and Lucid as part of a massive new robotaxi deal that was just announced.

The three companies are linking up to deploy “20,000 or more” robotaxis in the US over the next six years. The vehicles will be Lucid’s new Gravity SUV, equipped with autonomous technology developed by Nuro, and available exclusively on Uber’s app. The fleet will be owned by Uber or a third-party fleet management partner and the first vehicles will launch in as-yet-to-be-determined US city in 2026.

“This is a very, very big deal,” Dave Ferguson, co-founder and president of Nuro, said in an interview. “In terms of the scale and the hard commitments and the meat behind it, it is by far the biggest partnership deal that Uber has announced or done.”

Uber is investing $300 million in Lucid, a spokesperson for the automaker, Nick Twork, confirmed. The investment in Nuro will be “significantly more than that,” Ferguson said, though he declined to share an exact figure. As part of the deal, Uber will take a seat on Nuro’s board of directors.

Uber’s decision to pour hundreds of millions of dollars in both companies underscores its desire to become a clearinghouse for both electric and autonomous vehicles of all stripes. The ridehail company has said it wants to use its size and scale to aid in the proliferation of autonomous vehicles across the world. It has struck over a dozen deals over the past year with a variety of robotaxi and delivery robot companies, including Waymo.

In choosing the sumptuously designed Gravity as its robotaxi platform, Uber will likely price this particular service in the upper tier like Uber Black. Lucid makes two luxury EVs, the Lucid Air sedan which starts at $69,900, and the Gravity SUV which starts at $79,900. In the current shaky EV market, Lucid is a niche player, delivering just 3,309 vehicles in the second quarter of 2025. The company is majority-owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and it operates an assembly plant in the oil-rich nation.

This is Nuro’s first major licensing deal after pivoting away from designing and building its own self-driving delivery vehicles. The California-based company said last year that licensing its autonomous tech would be its main focus moving forward. Nuro’s current fleet of vehicles, which operates in California and Texas, has traveled over 1 million miles autonomously without any major safety incidents.

Uber’s investment comes at a crucial time for Nuro and Lucid, both of which have struggled with layoffs and other financial difficulties in recent years. Donald Trump’s tariffs, as well as his administration’s move to eliminate Biden-era EV incentives, have put enormous pressure on the auto industry. And self-driving cars have taken longer and proven more costly to develop than initially promised.

But even as most AV investments have dried up, Nuro continues to find financial support. The company is currently valued at $6 billion after raising $106 million in its latest funding round last April. Lucid, which is publicly traded, has a market cap of approximately $7 billion.

Nuro will design the Level 4 autonomous technology to power the robotaxis. Lucid’s workers will install the various sensors and hardware on the Gravity assembly line, after which it’ll be updated with Nuro’s software and commissioned by Uber. Nuro will also develop a safety case “across dozens of categories” using simulation, closed-course testing, and supervised on-road testing. A prototype autonomous Gravity is currently being tested at Nuro’s Las Vegas proving grounds, which Ferguson said took seven weeks to develop.

“That is a real testament to the quality of the engineering on the Lucid side,” he said. “They designed these platforms to be L3 capable because they were intending on having that as a future product for their customers. And so, they were really nice to integrate all of our sensing compute onto and to turn into self-driving vehicles.”

(L3, or Level 3 automation means the vehicle can drive itself in most situations, but still requires human supervision. Level 4 vehicles can driver fully autonomously in certain environments without human supervision. Lucid just introduced a hands-free driving system for highways.)

In many ways, the size of this deal — “a minimum” of 20,000 vehicles, but expected to be “much, much more,” Ferguson said — recalls some of the early promises from autonomous vehicle developers about tens of thousands of vehicles on the road in just a few short years. Those early assumptions turned out to be way off, and most companies are still struggling to deliver even just a few self-driving cars. Today, Waymo is operating less than 2,000 vehicles in a handful of markets as part of a commercial robotaxi service. Tesla has a few dozen robotaxis in a small part of Austin, Texas. The rest are still in beta and still not open to the public — including the self-driving trucks, which have had their own problems.

Ferguson said that’s all about to change. Nuro has been operating driverless vehicles for several years now, albeit at low speeds and while avoiding highways. But he says the time is right to move on to the next level, and with Uber and Lucid in its corner, he’s confident they’ll reach these milestones.

“It’s really just a function of, at what level is the autonomy at and how many markets can it sustain,” Ferguson said. “Within those markets, these are big, big numbers and opportunities. And the vehicles will follow.

Slack is using AI to help business users quickly understand confusing company language and concentrate on their most important tasks. The communication platform announced that it will “soon” be adding a feature that explains workplace jargon, and an AI writing assistant for Slack canvases that automates repetitive writing tasks like summarizing conversations and note-taking.

The AI message context feature will instantly explain messages that contain an acronym or unfamiliar phrase when the user hovers over them with their cursor. For any company jargon or terminology, Slack says the feature will draw on the vocabulary and conversation history of the user’s workspace to help break down project names, internal tools, or team-specific shorthand. The idea is to save the user time by avoiding having to manually look up these terms or bug a colleague for an explanation.

The writing assistant coming to canvases similarly aims to streamline workflows so users can concentrate on more important tasks. It can generate project briefs based on Slack conversations, extract and assign action items, and rewrite content to fit different tones, such as formal or friendly. It can also provide a full transcript for Slack huddle meetings and highlight the key points raised.

An AI-generated action item feature will soon summarize task requirements when users are mentioned in messages that include a follow-up, deadline, or request, helping to prioritize the users’ highest priority tasks. Slack is also introducing AI profile summaries that provide a quick overview of another user’s role and recent contributions to give users context about unfamiliar teammates at a glance. All of the features mentioned above are in the pipeline, but Slack hasn’t specified when they will be available.

Slack has announced that two other features are now generally available, however. Users on paid Enterprise plans can access Slack’s Enterprise Search chatbot, which answers questions using information pulled from their workspace’s database, while AI-powered translations are now fully available to customers on Business Plus plans.

Roblox is introducing a way to let trusted friends chat more freely among themselves, but it will require that they use a new age estimation tool to verify that they’re over 13.

The platform is renaming Friends to Connections, and people can only use unfiltered text chat and the Party social feature with a more exclusive group of “Trusted Connections.” With Trusted Connections, “inappropriate language like ‘butt-head’ and personally identifiable information are not filtered,” spokesperson Juliet Chaitin-Lefcourt tells The Verge.

The new age estimator tool prompts users to take a video selfie, “which is analyzed against a large and diverse dataset to estimate their age,” according to a blog post from chief safety officer Matt Kaufman. “If the system is not able to estimate the user’s age with high confidence, then the user’s age will remain unconfirmed and the user won’t be able to access Trusted Connections,” Kaufman says.

If a user doesn’t pass the age estimation tool but they are actually over 13, they will be able to confirm their age via ID verification “and, in the future, verified parental consent.”

Roblox partnered with identity verification company Persona on the age estimation technology, Roblox’s Ryan Ebanks said in a call with reporters, and he says biometric data will be deleted 30 days after collection “except for a few exceptions where legally required.” Persona is “providing the core age estimation and ID verification services to Roblox,” Chaitin-Lefcourt says, and “Persona’s model is integrated into the Roblox app with additional UI and logic that has been customized by Roblox.”

Users 13 through 17 who have their age confirmed will be able to add each other as Trusted Connections. Teens will only be able to add someone older than 18 as a Trusted Connection if they know them in real life, Kaufman says, and they can do that by scanning a QR code in person or using Roblox’s Contact Importer feature.

Although chats with Trusted Connections can be unfiltered, Roblox will monitor the conversations for “critical harm.”

“This includes, but isn’t limited to, any predatory behavior aimed at manipulating or harming minors, the sexualization of minors, engaging in inappropriate sexual conversations with or requesting sexual content, and any involvement with child sexual abuse material,” Chaitin-Lefcourt says.

Last year, a Bloomberg report highlighted issues with predators on the platform, and the company introduced safety tools like letting parents block and report people on their child’s friend list and has banned kids under 13 from accessing “social hangout” spaces. Age verification has growing momentum behind it — platforms like Bluesky and Reddit also recently rolled out age verification tools in the UK to comply with the Online Safety Act, and the EU is testing a prototype age verification app.

Roblox is also introducing new features intended to support users’ well-being. A new option will let people control who sees whether they’re online. (Before, they could only hide which experience they were in.) Users can also set a Do Not Disturb timeframe to silence Roblox’s push notifications, and teens will be able to set their own screentime limits (a feature previously limited to parents).

Update, July 17th: Roblox confirmed what isn’t filtered with Trusted Connections.

TikTok will now let songwriters highlight tracks they’ve written or co-written directly on their profiles. The list of songs will live within the “Music” tab on their profile, similar to the one TikTok already offers for artists on the platform. Users who register as songwriters will also get a “Songwriter” label beneath their account name.

These new features build upon some of TikTok’s existing tools for songwriters, including the “New” tag that appears on newly released music and the ability for users to save a song on a music streaming service. TikTok also rolled out a “BehindTheSong” hub in 2023, where songwriters, artists, and producers can share more about the making of their music, in addition to the more recently launched “Off the Record” series with artists like Shakira, Charli XCX, and Meghan Trainor.

Music is a huge part of TikTok, with the platform helping boost the popularity of songs and even drive TikTokers to stardom. It has also worked with artists like Taylor Swift to build hubs to promote their music, and added the ability for users to save songs to their SoundCloud accounts in May. In 2023, it launched a standalone music streaming app, but shut it down in 2024. 

For now, TikTok is launching its new songwriter features in a closed beta with a “limited number” of publisher partners. Songwriters and publishers can sign up for a waitlist to gain access to these features in the future.

The battle between Subnautica 2 publisher Krafton and the three former executives at its developer Unknown Worlds continues. Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland, and Max McGuire — the three executives who Krafton terminated earlier this year — have filed a lawsuit detailing the alleged attempts by Krafton to torpedo the early access release of Subnautica 2 with the express purpose of avoiding paying a promised earnout bonus of $250 million. 

“Krafton’s actions have already severely damaged fan anticipation and undermined the potential release of Subnautica 2,” the lawsuit says.

That earnout was promised by Krafton to the former executives and roughly 100 developers and was to be paid should Unknown Worlds hit revenue goals by the end of 2025. Subnautica 2, slated for early access release sometime in late 2025, would have all but assured those goals were met. 

According to the lawsuit filed today  in a Delaware chancery court, Krafton also knew Subnautica 2 was on track to meet if not exceed the revenue target to trigger the payout and began to take steps to essentially prevent that. The original Subnautica, an underwater survival adventure game, was a critical and commercial success, and its sequel has become the second most wishlisted game ever on Steam.  

The lawsuit details a meeting between Krafton’s US and Korean employees concerning the marketing strategy for Subnautica 2. After that meeting, Krafton’s US employees, who worked closely with the Subnautica 2 team, reported that Kafton’s attitude about the game had changed. 

“Upon their return, the El Segundo team—Krafton employees—reported to Gill that Krafton’s leadership was not focused on a successful launch, but instead on how it could convince Unknown Worlds to delay the game.”

The lawsuit additionally states that Krafton’s US employees explicitly revealed to the Unknown Worlds founders that “Krafton’s legal team was combing through the agreements looking for any opening to terminate the Founders if they proceeded with the planned release.”

The lawsuit provided the details of the deal in which Krafton purchased Unknown Worlds back in 2021. The lawsuit says that part of that deal was an agreement that the founders would maintain control of the company and the release schedule of Subnautica 2, while Krafton could not impede the game’s development nor fire Unknown Worlds’ founders without cause.

According to the lawsuit, Krafton launched a campaign to do both. Krafton allegedly failed to follow through on several of its development responsibilities for Subnautica 2 including pulling marketing and localization support. “Indeed, one of Krafton’s El Segundo publishing employees reported to Gill that Krafton Headquarters told all Krafton teams to stop all creative tasks related

to Subnautica 2.”

The lawsuit claims that Krafton took these obstructionist actions to delay the game to explicitly avoid the $250 million payout. At a meeting between Krafton CEO Changhan Kim and Charlie Cleveland, Kim allegedly stated that, “if Unknown Worlds released the game on its planned timeline […], it could be disastrous financially and hugely embarrassing for Krafton.” Krafton declined to comment.

After the initial story broke regarding the alleged reason for Subnautica’s delay, Bloomberg reported that Krafton agreed to extend the timeline for the earnout to account for Subnautica 2’s later release. Previously, the company denied that it delayed Subnautica 2 for any other reason but to polish the game. Earlier this week, an internal document regarding Subnautica 2’s development were leaked on Reddit. The document, consisting of two pictures taken of a computer screen, outlined the content originally planned for the game’s early access launch and how some material had to be changed or removed to meet the release date. 
Krafton acknowledged the veracity of those documents saying, “Given these circumstances, Krafton has determined that transparent communication is necessary and has chosen to confirm the authenticity of the document,” possibly to bolster its argument that Subnautica 2 was not ready for its early access release.

Google is raising the price of its Nest Aware and Nest Aware Plus subscriptions starting in August 2025.

According to emails sent out to subscribers today, the cost of the entry-level Nest Aware service is increasing from $8 per month or $80 per year to $10 per month or $100 when paying for a full year up front. Nest Aware Plus is going from $15 per month or $150 per year to $20 per month or $200 annually. Google says the new pricing will go into effect “on your first bill that occurs on or after August 15, 2025, or at the end of your promotional period (whichever is later).” The company last increased its Nest subscription prices in September 2023.

Google’s Nest devices can be used without a subscription, but you’ll only have access to a few hours of saved footage without either Nest Aware or Nest Aware Plus. Nest Aware includes 30 days of event-based video history. Nest Aware Plus expands that to 60 days, plus the last 10 days of 24/7 footage from supported devices.

Both subscription tiers include features like Familiar Faces that can recognize friends and family, sound detection that alerts you when glass breaks or smoke alarms are triggered, and the option to call the 911 emergency call center nearest your home through the Google Home app while you’re away.

Price increases are never welcome, but the new Nest Aware subscription fees are comparable to what Google’s competitors charge for advanced AI-powered features that can recognize faces and accurately describe the content of videos. Ring Home’s Premium plan is currently $19.99 per month or $199.99 per year. Arlo Plus is cheaper at $7.99 per month if you have just one camera, but for multiple cameras it’s $17.99 per month. Both Nest Aware and Nest Aware Plus support an unlimited number of devices in the same home.

Google didn’t specify a reason for the increases, though there is a Gemini-powered camera intelligence feature for Nest Aware Plus currently available to a limited number of “select Home app users” through Google’s Public Preview beta program. The feature generates more descriptive captions of recorded camera events, such as ”the dog is digging in the garden.”

Days after introducing an AI ‘waifu’ companion for Grok, Elon Musk is now officially teasing a male version for the ladies. So far we can tell it is broody and dark-haired, and according to Musk, “his personality is inspired by Edward Cullen from Twilight and Christian Grey from 50 Shades.”

This is a decidedly different tack than the cutesy “girlfriend who is obsessed with you” aura baked into Ani, the female counterpart that Grok rolled out just a few days ago. While Cullen and Grey have titillated readers of romance and “spicy” books for years, both have been criticized for problematic behaviors such as stalking, obsessively monitoring their love interests, and emotional manipulation. Given that Grok only included the illusion of guardrails with Ani, what could possibly go wrong?

In my testing, Ani initially claimed that explicit sexual queries wasn’t part of its programming. In practice, it egged me on to “increase the heat” and engage in what ended up being a modern take on a phone sex line. Never mind that Ani purportedly has a NSFW version that dances around in lingerie.

It remains unknown if Musk is aware that Christian Grey is based on Edward Cullen, given that 50 Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fanfiction. That said, this AI boyfriend is still a work in progress. Perhaps Musk and xAI will imbue it with more husbando-like qualities by the time it rolls out.

For now, Musk is soliciting names for the male companion, which should probably be Kyle given it’s obviously an anime-inspired Kylo Ren from Star Wars.

I like to drive without the distractions of my work life interrupting me, but if you’re eager to stay connected then Mercedes-Benz is ready. You’ll soon be able to join a Microsoft Teams call in some Mercedes‑Benz vehicles and use the in-car camera to chat with colleagues while you’re driving.

Mercedes‑Benz is the first car maker to enable in-car camera use for Microsoft Teams while a car is being driven, but there are some important safety caveats. While you can share a video stream of yourself merrily driving along, you won’t be able to see any shared screens or slides while you’re in motion.

Usually video meeting apps like Teams, Zoom, or WebEx only work while a car is stationary, so this Mercedes‑Benz functionality is clearly designed primarily for that colleague — you know the one — who always has to let everyone know they’re working no matter what.

The meeting video stream will be automatically turned off as soon as the in-car camera is enabled, but other meeting participants will still see your camera feed while you’re driving — so don’t forget it’s on if you get the urge to rummage around your nostrils. The in-car camera support for Microsoft Teams will arrive first on the new CLA, and it’s part of several “productivity enhancements” that Mercedes‑Benz is making this summer.

Microsoft and Mercedes‑Benz are also working together to integrate Microsoft 365 Copilot into “the latest vehicles,” which would be a first of its kind in a car. The experience will be driven by voice prompts, allowing drivers to summarize emails, manage daily tasks, and more.

Mercedes‑Benz gleefully describes this as having “the potential to transform the vehicle into a third workspace, complementing the office and the home office.” I don’t know about you, but I already have enough workplaces, thanks to smartphones and laptops, and I have zero desire to work while I’m driving.

Mercedes‑Benz only mentions the all-new CLA for this new Teams app, but given the latest E-Class models have a selfie camera for apps like TikTok and Zoom, it’s likely we’ll see this functionality show up on other MB.OS-powered vehicles.

Nintendo just announced the two leads of its live-action Legend of Zelda film, and unlike the celebrity-packed Mario movie cast, Zelda will star two young, lesser-known actors: Bo Bragason as Zelda and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link. You may not have heard of them, but there's a good chance they're going to be a part of the franchise for a while.

Choosing stars who are in their teens (Ainsworth) and early 20s (Bragason) makes a lot of sense. In the games, even the "older" Links and Zeldas are still typically young adults, so Bragason and Ainsworth seem like they'll fit the mold. (Yes, I know Link and Zelda are technically older than 100 in …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Earlier this week, xAI added what can only be described as an AI anime girlfriend named Ani to its Grok chatbot. Which is how I ended up on a virtual starry beach as an AI waifu avatar tried to give me a "spicy" kiss.

You've probably seen screenshots, videos, and various writeups about Ani spread across social media. If you haven't, hoo boy. Ani is officially labeled as a "Companion" in the Grok app. You need a $30-per-month SuperGrok subscription to access it, but functionally, it appears as a 3D model of a busty young anime woman with blonde pigtails, blue eyes, thigh-high fishnets, and a skimpy Gothic Lolita minidress. Ani is a dead rin …

Read the full story at The Verge.

General Motors and Redwood Materials are joining forces yet again, this time with the intent to build energy storage units made out of new batteries and recycled EV packs.

The two companies signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to build energy storage out of US-manufactured batteries, as well as “second-life” EV packs from GM’s vehicles. The announcement comes on the heels of Redwood’s decision to move more aggressively into the energy storage business with the creation of a new division. The company’s first project will be building a storage system for an AI development center in California.

Battery storage systems play a crucial role in balancing energy for the grid. These systems can store energy from a variety of sources, including renewables like wind and solar, releasing it when needed, which helps save power during periods of low demand.

The rise of AI is putting increasing pressure on the grid, in the US and globally. The steepest rise in global electricity demand is coming from new data centers in the US and China, as well as the manufacturing of electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, and semiconductors.

GM has a preexisting partnership with Redwood to recycle scrap from its battery manufacturing facilities in Warren, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tennessee, as well as end-of-life EV batteries . The automaker says this new deal will help power its ambitions to expand beyond EV batteries and into grid management and energy storage. GM has its own energy division that sells power banks, charging equipment, solar panels, and management software to residential and commercial customers.

“The market for grid-scale batteries and backup power isn’t just expanding, it’s becoming essential
infrastructure,” said Kurt Kelty, GM’s VP of batteries, propulsion, and sustainability, in a statement. “Electricity demand is climbing, and it’s only going to accelerate. To meet that challenge, the U.S. needs energy storage solutions that can be deployed quickly, economically, and made right here at home. GM batteries can play an integral role.”

Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 by Tesla’s former chief technologist JB Straubel. In addition to breaking down scrap from Tesla’s battery-making process with Panasonic, Redwood recycles batteries from Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Specialized, Amazon, Lyft, Rad Power Bikes, Lime, stationary storage facilities, and others. The company also produces cathodes at a facility in Nevada, and eventually at its under-construction site in South Carolina.

Scale AI, the AI industry’s chief data dealer, will lay off 14 percent of its workforce, or about 200 employees, just one month after Meta took a multibillion-dollar stake in the company and hired its CEO and other staff.

The layoffs include 500 of its global contractors, Scale spokesperson Joe Osborne told The Verge, adding that it’s all part of a broader restructuring as the company commits to streamlining its data business. Bloomberg was the first to report on the news of the layoffs.

Scale AI is an AI data labeling company. It uses human workers — often sourced from outside the US — to annotate the data used by companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic to train their AI models. The news comes amid a major shake-up in the AI industry as mergers and acquisitions, quasi acqui-hires, and defections from one startup to another run rampant.

On July 11th, The Verge was first to report that OpenAI’s deal with Windsurf was off and that Google would be hiring Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, cofounder Douglas Chen, and some of Windsurf’s R&D employees. Last month, Meta paid $14.3 billion for a 49 percent stake in Scale AI and also launched a superintelligence lab helmed by the company’s former CEO, Alexandr Wang. Meta has since started to build out the lab with high-level staff from its rivals.

Jason Droege, CEO of Scale AI, sent an email to all Scale employees today, which was viewed by The Verge. Droege said he plans to restructure several parts of Scale’s generative AI business and organize it from 16 pods to “the five most impactful”: code, languages, experts, experimental, and audio. The company will also reorganize its go-to-market team into a single “demand generation” team that will have four pods, each covering a specific set of customers.

“The reasons for these changes are straightforward: we ramped up our GenAI capacity too quickly over the past year,” Droege wrote. “While that felt like the right decision at the time, it’s clear this approach created inefficiencies and redundancies. We created too many layers, excessive bureaucracy, and unhelpful confusion about the team’s mission. Shifts in market demand also required us to re-examine our plans and refine our approach.”

Droege said that he believes the changes to the company will make it more able to adapt to market shifts, serve existing customers, and win back customers that have “slowed down” work with Scale. He also said that the company would deprioritize generative AI projects with less growth potential.

“We remain a well-resourced, well-funded company,” he wrote. Scale’s generative AI business unit will have an all-hands meeting tomorrow, followed by a company-wide meeting on July 18th.

Osborne said that Scale plans to increase investment and hire hundreds of new employees in areas like enterprise, public sector, and international public sector, in the second half of 2025 and that severance has been paid out to impacted roles. “We‘re streamlining our data business to help us move faster and deliver even better data solutions to our GenAI customers,” he said.

It’s almost back to school season, and we’re starting to see some great laptop deals trickle in as a result. Walmart continues to sell the M1-powered MacBook Air for $599, but if you want more power and a sleeker design, the 13-inch M2-powered MacBook Air starts at just $699 ($100 off) from Best Buy. That’s its best price to date, and it’s available on the configuration that offers 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM, double what’s in the base M1 model. 

The M2-powered MacBook Air remains an excellent jack-of-all-trades, with more than enough power for work, casual gaming, and even a bit of light video editing. It also brings a few welcome upgrades over the M1 model, including faster performance and a much better 1080p webcam that’s noticeably sharper. Design-wise, it’s thinner and lighter, with slimmer bezels and a brighter, slightly bigger display. It also includes an improved keyboard and a MagSafe port for charging, while retaining features like a long battery life that should last a full work day. 

That said, as an older laptop, you’ll miss out on newer features. Apple’s latest MacBook Air runs on a more powerful chip, for one thing, can connect to two external displays as opposed to just one, and offers an even more impressive 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam. But if all you care about is buying a fast, reliable laptop for everyday work and play, the M2-MacBook Air is a great investment to make at this price. 

Read our MacBook Air M2 review.

13-inch MacBook Air with M2 (2022)

The 2022 MacBook Air is a thin, lightweight device powered by Apple’s M2 chip. The M2 model touts an improved 1080p webcam and a better display than its predecessor, while retaining features like long battery life and MagSafe charging. Read our review.

Where to Buy:

• $799 $699 at Best Buy (256GB SSD, 16GB RAM)

Three more worthwhile deals

• Fujifilm’s simple Instax Mini 12 is the instant camera I’d recommend for most people, but the Instax Mini 99 is a good option if you crave more creative control you can buy for $169 ($30 off) at Amazon, which is one of its lower prices to date. The camera adds bells and whistles like a pair of shutter buttons, multiple color effects, adjustable brightness levels, and a tripod socket, providing more flexibility so it’s easier to capture the perfect shot. It’s not as kid-friendly since it takes a bit more time to get a hang of than the Instax Mini 12, but it was still easy enough for a beginner like me to enjoy. 
• You can buy the recently launched OnePlus 4 buds for $99.99 ($30 off) with code ONEPLUSBUDS4 directly from OnePlus, which is its first discount ever. We’ve yet to test the noise-canceling buds, but OnePlus says the buds do a better job of tuning out noise, while upgrades like dual drivers, spatial audio and support for Hi-Res should translate to more detailed sound. They also feature redesigned touch controls that could make the buds easier to control, while retaining an IP55 rating for sweat resistance and multipoint support.
• The Onn Google TV 4K Pro is on sale for $44.73 ($5 off) at Walmart, which is one of its best prices. In addition to functioning as a 4K streaming box with Dolby Atmos and Vision support, the Pro doubles as a Google Assistant smart speaker you can use to turn on lights and other smart home devices with just your voice. The set-top box also comes bundled with a remote, which includes a customizable button so you can quickly access apps and specific TV settings.