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Hello,
This is Simon with the latest edition of The Weekly. In these updates, I share key AI related stories from this week's news, list upcoming events, and share any longer form articles posted on the website.
Depending on where you work, there might already be a lot of vibe coding going on. If the term's new to you, vibe coding is when you build software by describing what you want in plain English and letting an AI tool write the actual code, with no programming knowledge required.
More and more workers are realising that these tools can help them build solutions they couldn't have imagined a year ago. So rather than waiting for IT or the data team to approve something, they're signing up for personal accounts with tools like Lovable or Replit and getting on with it.
On the one hand, this is fantastic. If you've got a problem you can solve in 30 minutes, why spend weeks going through internal processes, and that’s assuming you even get the support you need? You can upload a spreadsheet and ask a tool to build you a dashboard, or create a simple website to handle a few tasks. It seems amazing.
But while this all sounds like dreamland, there are serious flaws with simply creating an account and pointing these tools at your corporate data. There are the obvious data security gaps. Then there's the practical side: how do you share what you've built? How do you keep it updated and maintained, especially when you move on? And are you even allowed to upload company data into an unsanctioned online tool in the first place? I very much doubt it.
Through this newsletter, I've always encouraged you to explore what AI can do for you in your role. But I've also been clear that you should check your corporate IT policies and stay within them — otherwise you could find yourself in a short, uncomfortable meeting with your manager and someone from HR.
Have you been tempted to use a tool like Lovable to quickly build something useful at work? And do you actually know whether that's allowed?
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Real World Use Case
In this section, I’m going to bring to you a real world example of AI use and this week, we have an example from one of the world’s largest maker of agricultural machines, John Deere.
John Deere's See & Spray computer vision system operated across five million acres in 2025 — five times its 2024 footprint — saving 31 million gallons of herbicide mix and cutting non-residual herbicide use by nearly 50%.
See & Spray fits cameras to large field sprayers. As the machine moves through a crop at up to 15 mph, onboard processors scan more than 2,100 square feet of ground per second, distinguish individual weeds from crop plants, and fire herbicide only at what they identify as weeds. The result is targeted application rather than blanket coverage. In 2024, the system covered around one million US acres and saved an estimated eight million gallons of herbicide mix. In 2025 — a season marked by elevated weed pressure and frequent rain, conditions that normally push herbicide use higher — it covered five million acres and saved 31 million gallons, representing nearly a 50% reduction in non-residual herbicide use across treated ground. An Iowa State University study put the direct economic saving at $15.7 per acre from reduced chemical cost alone, before factoring in yield benefits. Third-party trial data found growers using the system yielding an average of two additional bushels per acre, with some sites recording 4.8 extra bushels. John Deere introduced an Application Savings Guarantee in 2025: farmers pay a per-acre fee only when the technology demonstrably reduces their application volume, which is a meaningful commercial signal that the company considers the results defensible at scale.
Curated News
Staff cuts are funding AI investments
Tech layoffs in 2026 have surpassed 142,000, with May alone producing some of the largest single cuts of the year, according to TechTimes. On 20 May, Intuit — the maker of TurboTax and QuickBooks — eliminated 3,000 jobs, 17% of its global headcount, with CEO Sasan Goodarzi telling CNBC the move "had nothing to do with AI" even as the company simultaneously announced an accelerated pivot to AI-driven products. In the same week, Oracle completed what analysts are calling the largest single layoff event of 2026, cutting approximately 30,000 positions while redirecting spending toward AI cloud infrastructure. Collectively, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are forecast to spend nearly $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year.
Why it matters: Major tech companies are making an explicit trade: human headcount out, AI infrastructure in. For business leaders watching the pattern, the strategic question is no longer whether AI will reshape staffing decisions
Cutting staff for AI is not delivering the expected returns
Related to the item above, a Gartner study published in May found that 80% of companies that reduced headcount while deploying AI did not achieve improved ROI, according to Fortune. The research found that simultaneous staff cuts and AI deployment tends to produce short-term budget savings while eroding institutional knowledge and degrading service quality. Klarna acknowledged that over-reliance on automation damaged customer service and required reinvestment in human support. Forrester separately warned that many organisations announcing AI-related redundancies do not yet have production-ready AI capable of filling the vacated roles.
Why it matters: The assumption underpinning many AI-motivated redundancy programmes that software can simply absorb the work, is looking increasingly shaky. For boards and senior leaders, Gartner's finding is a direct challenge to the cost-cutting rationale: laying people off does not automatically unlock AI returns.
Anthropic raises $65 billion
Anthropic raised a whopping $65 billion in a new funding round that valued the company at $965 billion, eclipsing OpenAI's valuation for the first time, according to Bloomberg. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, with each lead investor contributing more than $2 billion. Anthropic is the developer of Claude and is one of the main enterprise AI providers used by organisations deploying AI in regulated or sensitive environments.
Why it matters: For enterprise technology buyers, this valuation is a signal of where serious long-term capital is concentrating. With Anthropic now rivalling OpenAI on paper, organisations choosing or reviewing AI providers can expect intensifying competition on capabilities and pricing.
Upcoming AI Events
The AI Summit London
Tobacco Dock, London, June 10-11AI World Congress
Kensington Conference and Events Centre, London, June 23-24World AI Summit
Taets Art & Event Park, Amsterdam, October 07-08
Thanks for reading, and see you next Thursday.
Simon,
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