NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

Cursor Hits 1M Users After Spending $0 on Marketing

Can word-of-mouth alone build a $200M AI startup?

Cursor wasn’t launched with a splashy campaign or VC hype. But today, more than a million developers use it every day—from startups like Near AI to giants like Spotify, Instacart, and even Major League Baseball.

The AI-powered code editor developed by four twenty-something graduates of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) analyzes what you’re building and suggests the next lines of code.

It can fix bugs, answer technical questions, and help users keep creative momentum on side projects. It’s built on Visual Studio Code, supports models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and its own in-house systems—and it’s become a go-to tool for individual developers.

Much of Cursor’s early success has come from word-of-mouth. The team of 60 didn’t even make it easy to find a sales contact, but still hit $200 million in annualized revenue by March. Now, with over 14,000 businesses signed on and interest growing fast, the company is finally hiring a sales team.

ps. My AI engineering team at Addo AI uses Cursor too! 😊

Would You Let an AI Defend You in Court?

In a New York courtroom recently, something strange unfolded.

Jerome Dewald, a 74-year-old entrepreneur, made headlines when he represented himself using an AI avatar in an employment dispute before the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division.

Dewald sought permission to present his arguments via video. However, the court was caught off guard when the video featured an AI-generated avatar—a polished, youthful figure—using a synthetic voice delivering his case instead of Dewald himself.

Justice Manzanet-Daniels criticized Dewald for misleading the court and emphasized that such actions were inappropriate in a judicial setting. Dewald later apologized in writing.

Today it might be strange to have an AI lawyer represent one in court, but I don’t think the day is far off when it will be commonplace. What do you think?

Before You Hire, Ask: Can AI Do It?

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke has made a new rule inside the company: before asking to hire more people, teams need to explain why AI can’t handle the task instead.

In a memo shared publicly, Lütke encouraged employees to imagine what their work would look like if AI agents were already part of the team.

It’s a shift in mindset—asking people to not see AI as a tool to add later, but as a teammate from day one.

With a team of around 8,100 people, the company’s decision reflects a broader shift in how companies think about productivity. The old model was: more people, more output. The new one is: better tools, fewer people.

The approach has gone well for some players. Take Amazon: CEO Andy Jassy says their AI assistant (Amazon Q) saved $260 million and the equivalent of 4,500 developer-years by speeding up software upgrades and automating code reviews. What used to take them 50 days now takes just hours.

I appreciate Lütke’s approach; he’s not firing existing employees but rethinking how hiring happens going forward.

The Irish Startup Aiming for 1.5M Drone Deliveries

Order a coffee in parts of Dublin, and it won’t come by car or bike. A drone will pick it up from a cafe, fly it across the neighborhood, and lower it into your yard (still hot) just a few minutes later.

The Irish company behind it, Manna, just raised $30 million to expand its model across Europe. While others like Amazon and Alphabet’s Wing have been working on drone delivery for years, Manna is betting that its leaner, more focused approach will help it scale faster.

The company is focused on keeping things simple: small delivery zones, fast battery swaps, and drones that can make eight trips an hour. A single human worker can operate 8 drones and manage up to 30 deliveries per hour. That’s helped the company get costs down to about $4 per delivery—and unlike most competitors, Manna says it’s already making a profit on each order.

Manna is also teaming up with delivery apps like Wolt and Just Eat, giving it a fast track to millions of orders. Beyond food, I can see the same model being used for delivering medical supplies or reaching disaster zones—where speed and access are critical.

With supportive EU regulations already in place, it may just pull ahead of US rivals still navigating red tape.

Chef Robotics Raises $43M to Automate Cooking

Chef Robotics just closed $43.1M in new funding to scale up its AI-powered robot chefs.

These long-jointed machines hang above food assembly lines in cold production rooms, scooping up ingredients and portioning them into prepackaged meals. So far, they’ve helped assemble over 44 million meals, working with nearly 2,000 different ingredients—more than any other food robotics startup, according to the company.

Chef Robotics isn’t just building hardware. It’s training its own models to handle unpredictable food textures and packaging needs, and powering it all with a physical AI system it calls ChefOS.

The company’s goal is to automate the repetitive, tough-to-fill roles behind the scenes, where cold rooms and high turnover are the norm.