Weekly Roundup – May 27th, 2025

"The bull case for OpenAI to build an ads business just got a lot more real.
The company is developing a sleek AI companion device, born out of its acquisition of former Apple designer Jony Ive’s design firm, with plans to ship 100 million units, according to The Wall Street Journal. If it takes off, OpenAI could become as ubiquitous as the smartphone.
But moonshots like this aren’t cheap. OpenAI isn’t printing money, it’s torching it. The company told investors it won’t turn a profit until 2029, and expects to lose $44 billion along the way, per The Wall Street Journal.
That’s where advertising comes in.
It’s one of the few high-margin businesses that can absorb the cost of scaling both AI and hardware. With ChatGPT, the GPT Store and now a possible always-on device, OpenAI is steadily building an ecosystem full of engagement and signal-rich user behavior — exactly what advertisers want. And while OpenAI hasn’t said much about ads, it’s building the kind of ecosystem that rarely satay ad-free for long."

"It has been more than 10 years since movie theaters have seen a Memorial Day weekend this huge for the box office, but thanks to the combined efforts of Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch,” Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” and multiple holdovers and specialty titles, 2025 has set a new record for the holiday.
Overall totals for the 4-day weekend are estimated to finish at $328 million, passing the previous Memorial Day record before inflation adjustment of $314 million set in 2013, a year in which “Fast & Furious 6” led the charts while the rest of the top 5, which included “The Hangover Part III,” “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” “Epic” and “Iron Man 3,” all grossed more than $20 million that weekend."

"Texas could become the next US state to lay down the law with social media platforms. A Texas bill that would ban social media use for anyone under 18 recently moved past the Senate committee and is due for a vote in front of the Texas State Senate. The bill has until the state's legislative session comes to an end on June 2, leaving roughly a week for it to be approved by both the Senate and the governor.
Earlier this year, the bill passed the House committee stage and was later voted in favor of by the state's House of Representatives. If made into law, the bill would force social media platforms to verify the age of anyone setting up an account, much like how Texas passed legislation requiring websites hosting porn to implement an age verification system. On top of that, Texas' social media ban proposes to let parents delete their child's social media account, allowing the platforms 10 days to comply with the request or face a fine from the state's attorney general."

"Six months after the Democratic Party’s crushing 2024 defeat, the party’s megadonors are being inundated with overtures to spend tens of millions of dollars to develop an army of left-leaning online influencers.
At donor retreats and in pitch documents seen by The New York Times, liberal strategists are pushing the party’s rich backers to reopen their wallets for a cavalcade of projects to help Democrats, as the cliché now goes, “find the next Joe Rogan.” The proposals, the scope of which has not been previously reported, are meant to energize glum donors and persuade them that they can compete culturally with President Trump — if only they can throw enough money at the problem."

"Cord-cutting in cable could be turning around. A growing number of people who had abandoned cable subscriptions are changing their mind. Costs and reliability are the two most cited reasons.
Roughly 15 years ago, a movement began to take shape as people got fed up with the ever-escalating cost of their cable subscriptions. Cord-cutters began to drop their subscriptions to Comcast, Time Warner, and other providers. But as so many things do, that trend is starting to reverse itself...
A new study from Coupon Cabin finds 22% of the people who cut the cord have changed their minds and returned to a cable subscription. Another 6% are considering making the switch back in the near term."