Here’s your Monday dose of The F42 Brief.
📈 Trending Now
The one thing that’s making all the noise …. with a bit of fact checking.
💡Innovator Spotlight
Founders that are doing stuff differently.
🛠️ Tool of the Week
Something useful to up your startups velocity.
📌 Note to Self
Stuff I constantly remind myself about, don’t want make the same mistakes again.
📈 Trending Now
Beyond the Screen — OpenAI’s £5 B Leap into Pocket AI
This headline grabbed me when it flashed up: Sam Altman has snapped up Jony Ive’s hardware skunk-works, io, in an all-stock deal worth about $6.5 billion (£5 billion). Ive—the creative mind behind the iPhone and iMac—now runs design at OpenAI via his studio LoveFrom. The remit? Build a family of devices that put generative AI in your hand without the tyranny of a touchscreen.
Side note on the launch photo: two men, monochrome, relaxed—one leaning in with chunky glasses, the other forward-facing with a reassuring hand on his shoulder. The body language screams trust and partnership—exactly the frame you need when you’re asking the world to follow you into a post-screen future.
Why I’m Paying Attention
Control the on-ramp, own the user. By making its own hardware, OpenAI sidesteps the Apple/Google toll gates—the device itself becomes the moat.
Built for a screen-less future. Altman and Ive describe a discreet, context-aware pocket companion that talks, listens and learns. Think AirPods ubiquity, not another smartwatch.
18–24-month sprint to market. A 2026 launch leaves two years to crack battery life, on-device inference and bullet-proof privacy—non-negotiables for always-on AI.
Inside Story: six truths from Sam & Jony’s 21 May memo
LoveFrom’s involvement is no weekend project. The team began prototyping hardware two years ago—well before OpenAI publicly entertained the idea of making devices. That long lead-time signals deep conviction and a head-start on rivals.
Ive has assembled an A-team pedigree, quietly recruiting former Apple luminaries Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan. If your goal is to out-Apple Apple, these are the people you poach.
The venture boasts a full-stack skillset, mixing physicists, materials scientists and seasoned manufacturing engineers. In plain English: they intend to ship silicon, not PowerPoint decks.
Crucially, design now sits inside the model lab. Ive and LoveFrom hold “deep design and creative responsibilities” across both OpenAI and io, enabling rapid, closed-loop iterations between hardware form-factor and model capability.
The project radiates optimism over utility. Internal memos focus on delight, wonder and tools that elevate humanity—a nostalgic echo of the first iMac launch rather than a dry spec sheet.
Finally, Altman and Ive are staging a cultural reset. They invoke the “innocent optimism of Silicon Valley” from three decades ago, pitching this venture as a renaissance, not a marginal feature upgrade.
Strategic Implications for Founders & Funders
Distribution resets—again. When AI lives in custom silicon you slip in a pocket, browsers and apps lose their choke-hold. Build for voice, gesture and edge inference now.
Vertical stacks win. Model + OS + device in one shop lets OpenAI tune performance and economics end-to-end. Single-layer start-ups will feel the squeeze unless their data or community is irreplaceable.
Hardware UX is back. The next breakout may look more like a Tamagotchi than a smartphone. Designers who marry behaviour, context and ambient AI will be in short supply.
My Playbook
Founders: Sketch a no-screen version of your product this week. If your user journey assumes the phone survives unchanged, you’re exposed.
Investors: Re-rank your portfolio for hardware competency and proprietary data loops. Pure-software margins will compress.
Operators: Watch for open roles where industrial design meets ML inference—you won’t get a better entry point.
I’ll keep decoding every crumb—patent filings, supply-chain hires, FCC leaks. If you spot anything interesting, ping me. The next iPhone-scale inflection might already be on the drawing board.
💸 New Funds looking to give you cash
Look out for the The Raise Report this Wednesday, bring you all the new funds that have raised capital and looking to deploy.
Master the Art and Science of Fundraising
Unlock the inner workings of capital raising with proven insights from those who've raised millions. Gain real-world strategies that transform ideas into funded ventures.
Day One Tue, 3 Jun 9:00 AM PST
Live looper performance
Vision & kickoff with Kurt, Derek & Henrik
Raise perspectives: Family office, VC, CVC & PE
Capital stack & round sequencing
VC terms & cap-table workshop
Day Two Wed, 4 Jun 9:00 AM PST
Live artist performance
Non-dilutive & sponsored capital
Community wild-card panel
GTM strategies that secured funding
Fused & Funded evening networking
Day Three – Thu, 5 Jun 9:30 AM PST (IRL @ VentureHaus, Las Vegas)
9:30 AM Arrival, coffee & open networking
10:00 AM Fireside Feature – $3K → $5K Scaling Pathways with Phil Peredo
12:00 PM Networking lunch – small tables with Channel Champs & investors
1:00 PM Workshop – Money Mindset Mastery with Shane Scott (Shark Tank coach)
2:00 PM Founder pitch sessions – live & virtual investors, moderated
3:30 PM Round-robin 1-on-1s – founders rotate through 2-3 strategic meetings; investor breakouts
5:00 PM Closing toast & call-to-action – Fusion42 Accelerator + Fusion42 Fast invites, photo ops, final networking
💡Innovator Spotlight
Tata Gluco+ Spins Up the First All-AI Ad
Tata Consumer Products just rewrote the ad-playbook. Their new campaign for Tata Gluco+, “Piyo Goodness. Karo Greatness,” is a 100 per cent AI-generated film—no cameras, crews, or post-match extras.
The story – A litter-strewn stadium, cleaners drowning in plastic. A group of mates down Tata Gluco+, whip up a “tornado” of action, and rally the crowd to leave the place spotless.
The tech – VML devised the concept; digital studio RAIDs stitched every frame together with a custom AI pipeline built on OpenAI models—cinematic transitions, crowd shots, even the hero tornado, all from code.
The why – “Energy, when guided by purpose and empathy, leads to collective greatness,” says Partha Biswas (Tata CP). In short: drink the glucose, do something good.
The signal – A mainstream FMCG brand cut live-action out of the process and still delivered prime-time polish. Expect AI-native production to compress costs, timelines, and carbon footprints across advertising.
Take-away for founders & funders: generative pipelines aren’t just cost savers—they unlock narratives that were prohibitively expensive last year. If an Indian drinks brand can pull this off, your product demo video has no excuse.
If you have not joined the Fusion42 Community on Telegram — A space for Founders, Framers, and Funders who show up to get **it done,
it is probably time to do so.
For the ❤️ of Startups
🛠️ Tools of the Week.
Google’s new AI arsenal from I/O 2025
🔍 AI Mode in Search – chat-first tab with Deep Search, camera queries and agentic actions.
🎤 Gemini Live – free voice+camera assistant on Android / iOS. Download the Gemini app
🖼️ Imagen 4 – 2 K, typo-perfect image generation. See examples
🎬 Veo 3 + Flow – AI video with native SFX plus a storyboard-to-final-cut workflow. Meet Flow
⚡ Gemini 2.5 Pro & Flash – deeper reasoning or blazingly fast mode. Model update
📚 LearnLM in Gemini – education-tuned weights for personalised study help. Details
📷 Project Astra + ⛵ Mariner – real-time camera context and in-search bookings. Keynote recap
✉️ Gemini in Gmail – smart replies & thread summaries, rolling out this summer. Workspace blog
💎 AI Pro (£20 / mo) & AI Ultra (£200 / mo) – premium tiers with bigger limits, YouTube Premium and 30 TB cloud. Subscribe
🟢 Google Beam (ex-Starline) – HP-built light-field rig for life-size 3-D calls. First look
Why it matters: Google just made AI the default layer across search, comms and creation. Kick the tyres now or risk playing catch-up.
📌 Note to Self
Thank you for reading. If you liked it, share it with your friends, colleagues and everyone interested in the startup Investor ecosystem.
If you've got suggestions, an article, research, your tech stack, or a job listing you want featured, just let me know! I'm keen to include it in the upcoming edition.
Please let me know what you think of it, love a feedback loop 🙏🏼
🛑 Get a different job.
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For the ❤️ of startups
✌🏼 & 💙
Derek