July must be a momentous month for Agnes Kim, a South Korean native who has spent most of her life in the United States. It was in July 2018 that she landed a role at the Microsoft-owned gaming business, Xbox. Eight years later, in July 2026, she was notified that she was one of the 4,800 staff to be let go by the company.

Agnes started her Microsoft journey as a strategic partner manager at Xbox and ended it as the head of strategic market expansion. She owned Xbox’s expansion across China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and India. But as with everything in life, that journey has ended, probably not in the way Agnes would have wanted.

For many, the human side of layoffs is often overlooked. Some forget that the numbers represent humans with families to care for. Still, a lot of people wonder what it feels like for an employer like Microsoft to say “we don’t need you anymore, so we are letting you go.” We asked Agnes, and she said it wasn’t a palatable feeling.

“It felt as though my heart dropped into my stomach. For a moment, everything seemed to pause,” Agnes told me exclusively while describing the moment she got the ominous news.

Wave of lay-offs in the tech industry

With the wave of layoffs that have hit the tech sector in 2026, professionals in the industry are fully aware they are sitting on the edge of a cliff, especially in an era where corporations cite AI efficiency as a good reason to let thousands of people go.

To be fair, Microsoft’s chief people officer, Amy Coleman, clarified July 6 that "the roles eliminated today are not being replaced by AI”. She added, however: “At the same time, ​what is true is that AI is changing how work gets done."

Agnes said she was fully aware of the changes in the technology and gaming industry, yet the news was still hard to digest when it finally got to her turn.

“The technology and gaming industries have experienced several rounds of change in recent years, so when you begin hearing reports and seeing the broader industry news, you understand that your role could potentially be affected. Still, nothing fully prepares you for receiving that meeting invitation,” Agnes told me.

In January, Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People at Amazon, announced the company was laying off 16,000 workers. In May, Meta laid off 8,000 workers, which is about 10% of its workforce.

Altogether, there have been 460 layoff rounds across tech companies in 2026, impacting 167,688 workers, according to layoff tracker Trueups, which estimates that 847 people are laid off every day.

How Agnes is navigating her job loss with courage

For Agnes, who happens to be one of the 167,688 workers laid off in 2026, the shock was deep. She had spent eight years at Xbox building relationships that are simply too hard to wave off. But she also realises that in those years, she had much to be thankful for. She decided to think more of what she had achieved, rather than focus on the loss.

“I found myself reflecting on eight years of experiences, relationships, challenges, and accomplishments, all coming to a close in a single conversation. There was shock and sadness, but also an enormous sense of gratitude for everything that chapter of my career had given me,” she told me.

Perhaps the lesson that comes from losing one’s job without warning is that it is often good to make use of opportunities because tomorrow is not promised.

Agnes seemed to have known that the job wouldn’t be there forever, so she spent her time at Microsoft building relationships and connections, and making her mark in the gaming industry. So instead of sulking forever, she is grateful.

“Microsoft gave me a tremendous amount, but what I value most are the people and relationships. The connections I made there were genuine, and many will remain an important part of my life long after my time at the company. I am deeply grateful to Microsoft and Xbox for helping me discover my strengths: building teams, connecting cultures, developing new markets, and creating momentum around an idea. Most of all, I will miss the people and the sense of possibility that made my earlier years at Xbox so memorable,” Agnes told me.

Agnes launches her own company called ViaJiin

After a job loss, starting afresh is often hard. Yet, less than a week after her layoff, Agnes launched her own company. She has leveraged her deep knowledge of Korean skincare products, combining it with the experience she gained in the tech industry to launch ViaJiin, a brand that aims to bring the best of Korean cosmetics to the US market.

Agnes told me she is not currently job hunting.

“For now, I am fully focused on building ViaJiin,” she said. “Throughout most of my career, I have been someone who always had a plan: the next assignment, the next promotion, or the next professional milestone. For the first time, I am allowing myself to step back and ask a more fundamental question: “What kind of work do I genuinely enjoy?” The answer is building.”

I asked Agnes to share the most valuable lesson she learned from working at Xbox, and she had one word: Resourcefulness.

“I learned how to be resourceful, resilient, and comfortable building something even when there is no established playbook. Those lessons are especially important now as I build ViaJiin,” she said.

For someone who has spent eight years working in tech, pivoting into cosmetics might seem awkward, but it is not so for Agnes. She has always had a passion for beauty and wellness, so it is a familiar terrain.

“I still love the gaming industry and will always be a gamer, but I have also had a long-standing passion for beauty, wellness, and cultural discovery. ViaJiin gives me an opportunity to bring those interests together,” she said.

“Toby…Hope you are keeping well. I wanted to contact you with some unfortunate news,” the email began, before delivering the message which Tobias told me left him in disbelief.

He had applied for the job in October, 2025 through the company’s online portal and had spent two months doing interview rounds, including one in-person assessment. In December, he finally received an offer as a graduate analyst.

Wrapping up from Leeds University and looking forward to work

At the time, Tobias was wrapping up his Bachelor of Science degree in economics at the University of Leeds and was looking forward to resuming work after graduation. But two days before submitting his final dissertation, he got the devastating email. The company described the decision to cancel the offer as a “very difficult” one.

“Sadly, we have had to make the very difficult decision to rescind your 2026 graduate offer of employment. This has not been an easy decision at all, and is entirely resultant from rapidly evolving changes in our business needs. It is in no way a reflection of you, or your abilities. We are truly sorry for any disruptions caused, particularly at such an important time for you,” the email read. The Algorithm Post has reached out to the company PMSI Strategy for comments.

Tobias, who has now graduated from Leeds, told The Algorithm Post the shocking news ripped up his plans

“Initially, I was in complete shock and disbelief. Everything that I'd been planning, moving in with my best mate, was ripped up in one go. The email mentioned "rapidly evolving business needs", so I thought it meant they had lost some clients or potential projects - consulting is well known for being cyclical,” he told me during a chat.

The phone call that confirmed the news

He wasn’t satisfied with the explanation the firm gave for terminating his offer, so he picked up a phone and called them. He wanted to know exactly what happened.

“When I phoned up the partners, they told me the real reason was AI,” Tobias said.

Tobias told me he had turned down other offers that came his way before receiving the bad news.

In February, Tobias had attended a talk hosted by Alex Rutter, the MD of AI at Google Cloud. There was a Q&A during which the audience wanted to know how AI would impact the job market. Tobias recalled Rutter alluding to the Industrial Revolution, where jobs didn’t disappear, but people adapted to the changing technology. Tobias said he was sceptical, but wasn’t worried, since he already had an offer. Three months later, he lost the offer due to AI. He told me he didn’t see it coming.

“At this moment I had an 'of course' moment and couldn't believe I hadn't seen it coming. It was devastating and deeply frustrating to know that I'd lost my job through no fault of my own, despite signing the contract, and that I'd turned down other offers for no reason,” he said during our chat.

Grim predictions about AI job apocalypse

There have been grim predictions of a job apocalypse since the emergence of AI. Tech CEOs, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, have been at the forefront of disclosing what impact AI could have on the job market.

During his appearance at the Capital Framework for Large Banks at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington in 2025, Altman predicted that AI would wipe out some job categories. He mentioned customer service roles as one area where AI was already performing perfectly.

“Now you call one of these things and AI answers. It’s like a super-smart, capable person. There’s no phone tree, there’s no transfers. It can do everything that any customer support agent at that company could do. It does not make mistakes. It’s very quick. You call once, the thing just happens, it’s done,” he said.

However, in a more recent interview with Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) Chief Executive Matt Cayman, Altman admitted he was wrong, saying “I'm delighted to ⁠be wrong about this, I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than ​has actually happened.”

Yet, Tobias said his experience taught him that he was not as safe as he thought. But just as Altman said, Tobias thinks some roles are more vulnerable to AI, and so he is focusing on finding other roles that are better shielded from the negative impact of the fast-developing technology.

“Of course. I thought that I was safe getting my foot in the door, but I think it's become clear that the job market is changing faster than anyone could expect. I'm now focusing on finding roles that are better protected from AI,” he told me.

Adaptation and learning new skills have often been presented as the best way to stay immune from the predicted AI apocalypse. People are increasingly told to stay up-to-date by becoming AI-fluent. However, Tobias said people should not be blamed for not adapting in the age of AI, noting that the solution must be structural. He believes the government must come in to protect jobs and also help people make the switch.

“This means we need the government to focus on demand-side solutions to protect existing jobs and support the transition, rather than blaming people for not getting jobs when the number of graduate positions has fallen by 33% since 2022,” he said.

Before clicking “apply”, one of the things most tech job seekers consider is how much the role pays. They want to know whether the salary is enough to cover their bills and still leave them with some savings.

Among other things, tech job seekers do mental math about how much it would cost them to commute to work daily (if the job is on-site) or to run a home office if the job is remote. They then compare everything to the listed salary to know whether it is worth it. If it is not worth it, they don’t apply.

But what if the salary for a role is not listed at all and you are left in the dark? What if the actual budget for the role is deliberately omitted from the job description, and you are left asking yourself, “What’s in it for me?”

Because the employer did not list the salary to help you decide, you don’t know whether to apply and negotiate salary at the interview, or abandon the application entirely.

That is the situation many Nigerian tech job seekers find themselves in, as many employers in the country do not include salary information in their job postings.

The reality facing tech job seekers

The Algorithm Post analysed Hot Nigerian Jobs, one of the most popular job boards in Nigeria and found that of the 99 tech roles posted between May 28 and July 3, only 13 (13.13%) of them included full salary information, while 4 roles (4.04%) only mentioned salary structure and “competitive pay.”

Out of the 99 tech roles analysed on Hot Nigerian Jobs, 82 (82.83%) said nothing about compensation or benefits for the employee.

One of the roles for a full-stack developer is located in Lekki, Lagos State. It listed 10 job requirements, including a “minimum of 5 years of proven professional experience in full-stack software development.” Every single benefit the employer would get is listed on the JD. Yet, it was silent on what’s in it for the applicant, who is essentially left in the dark.

It is often the duty of the employer to provide employment benefits, which is why the job board is not to blame.

How secretive pay affect applicants

Human resources experts have argued that including salary information in a job description actually saves time. Ibukun Amosu, the founder and tech talent partner at the Intern Place, a recruitment body in Lagos, said secretive pay weakens candidates’ negotiating power.

“Candidates spend time applying and interviewing for roles without knowing whether the compensation aligns with their expectations. It creates information asymmetry that often weakens their negotiating position, particularly for early-career professionals who lack reliable market salary data,” said Amosu.

In other parts of the world, job boards are different. In places such as the US, parts of Asia and Europe, many job postings are clearer about what the applicant will get if hired. While some roles in these climes are listed without pay information, in some cases, employers are required by law to include salary information in job descriptions.

In California, for instance, Senate Bill 1162 specifically mandates that “an employer with 15 or more employees shall include the pay scale for a position in any job posting.”

Nigeria does not have laws mandating salary disclosure in job postings. This emboldens employers to maintain secrecy in what ordinarily should be routine.

Why do many employers in the Nigerian tech sector hide salary details in job postings?

One of the reasons Nigerian employers do not care to include salary information in job descriptions is because there is no law to hold them accountable. It is therefore optional, making it possible to avoid any consequences. But it might be that they want to control the levers of negotiation during interviews, or they don’t know the pay scale. Most times, however, the employer simply wants to negotiate the lowest salary possible due to a lean budget.

Afolabi Sokeye, a product manager and founder of Salary Index, a platform that publishes salary data in Nigeria, said some employers omit salary information because they do not know the prevailing market rate for a particular tech role.

“I can’t speak for the reason Nigerian tech employers don’t publish salary ranges on job applications, but what I can say is it’s always been hard for professionals to know their worth or what they should ask for when going into job interviews. Companies and their HR teams also have issues with this because they also don’t know how much they should be paying for specific roles, which is why they tend to undervalue the salary ranges,” Sokeye told The Algorithm Post in an emailed response.

The non-inclusion of salary information in job descriptions benefits the employers the most, says Sokeye, noting that “they are the ones paying the employees and as such have a bigger role in deciding how much they should be paid. On the other hand, the lack of salary transparency has been a major problem for people who want to get employed because the lack of knowledge makes them take jobs where they are underpaid and keeps them underpaid.”

Amosu of the Intern Place said one of the reasons tech employers omit salary information is due to a lack of internal structure.

“There are a few reasons. Many startups don't have structured compensation frameworks, so salaries are often determined on a case-by-case basis. Some employers also want flexibility to negotiate based on a candidate's experience or current pay, while others worry that publishing salaries could create internal equity issues if existing employees discover they are paid differently. In some cases, it's simply a legacy hiring culture where salary transparency has never been the norm. But in startups especially, compensation decisions are often influenced by available funding and hiring urgency rather than standardised pay bands,” Amosu said.

Amosu is one of those recruiters who believes that disclosing salary in a job posting leads to a higher-quality application. The Intern Place, where Amosu works, often includes pay information in job postings.

“For me, it is about trust and fairness. Salary is one of the most important factors in a career decision, so candidates deserve that information upfront. Over the years, I have found that salary disclosure leads to better-quality applications, more productive conversations and a stronger employer brand for the companies I recruit for,” he told The Algorithm Post.

The bigger problem of low pay in Nigeria’s tech sector

The problem is not just that tech job seekers in Nigeria often don’t know the salary for a role they are applying for; it is also that they’re likely to earn less than their peers elsewhere if they get the job.

There have been several online debates about how poorly tech workers are paid in Nigeria by their employers. It is nothing compared to what their peers earn elsewhere.

According to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), the average pay for a software developer in the country is $131,450 (N179 million) per year. Recruitment company Glassdoor estimates that software engineers earn $151,000 (N206 million) per year as median pay in the US, in addition to other perks.

In Nigeria, the median pay for software engineers varies greatly. Glassdoor estimates that the average pay for senior software engineers ranges from N600,000 ($438.37) to N1 million ($730.61) per month.

However, verified data pulled from the career pages of some companies by Salary Index shows that fintechs such as Cowrywise pay senior software engineers as high as N1.4 million per month.

Obviously, Nigeria’s economy cannot be compared in any way to that of the US. Sokeye of Salary Index believes Nigeria’s situation is very unique. The larger economy influences how much people get paid.

“Nigeria has a very unique culture around compensation because the amount you’re paid depends on the company’s revenue or funding available to pay employees,” Sokeye told The Algorithm Post.

Nigerian tech workers turn to remote work to increase earnings

To improve their prospects of earning higher wages, Nigerian tech workers who cannot afford to relocate abroad are turning to remote work. It is not unusual to find a techie working for a global company from their room somewhere in Nigeria.

From data science to web development, Nigerian techies are learning that their skills are better appreciated elsewhere and could fetch them reasonable amounts. They have embraced it fully.

“Remote work and foreign employment have drastically improved what Nigerian professionals demand to get paid because when the global economy has a shortage, they come to Nigeria to hire skilled workers, and we’ve seen more people come out to talk about what they are getting paid at these organisations, which helps Nigerian talents dream bigger and Nigerian employers now have to pay competitively to keep their Nigerian talent,” said Sokeye of Salary Index.

Sokeye believes he has a solution to opaque job postings in Nigeria. He said he started Salary Index after he was underpaid by an employer. The website curates pay scales for different roles and displays them publicly, helping applicants to know what to demand during interviews.

“I have been underpaid before, and I know how it feels. I want to help Nigerian professionals to know their worth so they can fight for the right compensation. Salary Index also benefits employers because now HR teams have verified data they can use to benchmark salaries across different roles, industries and locations so they can pay their employees fairly. This way it’s a win for everyone involved,” he said.

Meta’s AI ambitions have forced CEO Mark Zuckerberg to make a post on X for the first time in three years.

On Thursday, July 9, Meta launched Muse Spark 1.1, its latest model with agentic and coding capabilities.

Zuck, who rarely makes posts on X, came on the platform to market Muse Spark to the developer community. The last time he posted anything on X was July 6, 2023.

“Didn’t know Zuck had a Twitter account. His last tweet was in 2023. Pretty much confirms X is the best place to talk about AI,” said Yuchen Jin, the co-founder of OctoAI, which was acquired by Nvidia in 2024.

Meta is racing against time to bring developers on board with its Muse Spark coding agent. The company has faced stiff competition from the more successful Anthropic and OpenAI, whose models and agentic tools have seen wide adoption among developers and enterprise users.

Why Mark Zuckerberg posted on X after 3 years

It does appear Zuck is taking the role of chief marketer to help push the product, and the responsibility was enough to make him return to X after three years.

“Today we're releasing Muse Spark 1.1 -- a strong agentic and coding model at a very low price. It's available through our new Meta Model API and in Meta AI,” the Meta CEO wrote.

From the wording of the post, which has racked up 15 million views, the Meta CEO appears to have been addressing developers directly. The race to win over developers and enterprise users is highly competitive.

In a study of 50,000 US companies published in May by the Ramp AI Index, Anthropic has a 34.4% business adoption rate ahead of OpenAI’s 32.3%.

Meta, whose Meta AI was initially open-source, is still struggling to gain widespread enterprise usage for its first proprietary offering, Muse Spark, developed in its Super Intelligence Lab led by Alexandr Wang.

“The Meta Model API allows developers to build using Muse Spark for the first time. Our focus is on delivering strong agentic and multimodal models at very low cost,” Zuck wrote.

Elon Musk’s reaction to Mark Zuckerberg’s post

Zuck’s post attracted Elon Musk’s attention as he commented “Jinx”, apparently saying the Facebook founder has broken his jinx for not posting on the platform. Musk owns X.

In a separate post, the SpaceXAI founder said X is a great place to unveil new products.

“𝕏 is a great platform for product announcements, especially if done by the CEO directly. Way more interesting to the public than generic press releases. This post by Mark Zuckerberg already received over 12 million views for free!” Said Musk.

Musk does not have accounts on Meta platforms, Facebook, Instagram or Threads.

In 2018, Musk deleted his Instagram account, saying “Instagram is so thirsty, yet gives you Death by Water.” In March of the same year, SpaceX and Tesla, both owned by Musk, were pulled from Facebook.

Zuckerberg’s X account, which was opened in 2009, has exactly 16 posts, apart from reactions and replies. That’s roughly one post per year.

Vercel, the company that helps developers deploy websites and web applications on the internet, has acquired Better Auth.

Better Auth is an open-source TypeScript authentication library that enables developers to host and manage authentication themselves instead of relying on third-party hosted services.

Founded by Bereket Engida, Better Auth currently has 4.7M+ weekly npm downloads and more than 850 contributors, according to Vercel, which made the acquisition announcement in a blog post.

“Founder Bereket Engida and the core team are joining Vercel to continue their work on Better Auth and agent identity,” said Guillermo Rauch, CEO and founder of Vercel, in the blog post.

In the era of AI agents, web developers are no longer just battling to build apps and websites that can authenticate humans; they are now thinking of how to authenticate autonomous agents acting on behalf of humans.

Bereket Engida joins Vercel

In a separate blog post, Bereket, the Ethiopian self-taught developer who started Better Auth in 2024, said joining Vercel will enable his team to continue their work to improve the auth framework.

“Together, we’ll also be able to invest more deeply in where auth is heading: a future where agents act on users’ behalf and need secure, scoped, and revocable access, while bringing these primitives across Vercel’s products,” Bereket said.

Neither Better Auth nor Vercel disclosed how much the deal was worth.

Reacting to the development, Nigerian investor and founder of Tekedia Capital, Ndubuisi Ekekwe, disclosed that Better Auth was a Tekedia portfolio company.

“Good People, it is with great excitement that I announce the acquisition of one of our portfolio companies, Better Auth, by the industry-leading decacorn, Vercel. Founded by a self-taught tech prodigy from Ethiopia, Better Auth has ascended to become a preeminent force in open-source authentication,” Ekweke said in a LinkedIn post Thursday.

In 2025, Better Auth raised $5 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, Chapter One, P1 Ventures, and Peaky XV, TechCrunch reports.

OpenAI is doubling down in its competition with Anthropic. The Sam Altman-led frontier lab has announced the release of a new voice feature called ChatGPT Live.

What is ChatGPT Live and how does it work?

ChatGPT Live is a voice feature that allows users to interact with the model using voice, rather than text.

Unlike the previous features where users record audio and send it to the chatbot to respond to, ChatGPT Live listens to the user’s voice and responds in real time as an active participant in the conversation.

ChatGPT Live allows for a continuous conversation instead of processing audio messages one after the other.

“During conversations, GPT‑Live can show it’s paying attention with phrases like “mhmm” or “yeah”, engage in quick back-and-forth, or just stay quiet when you need a moment to think. The result is a voice experience that is refreshingly easy to talk to,” OpenAI said in a blog post Wednesday.

From the launch video, OpenAI clearly wants to achieve a human-like conversation between real humans and its ChatGPT model.

The company said it is rolling out ChatGPT Live globally in two versions: ChatGPT-Live-1 and ChatGPT-Live-Mini.

“Our vision is to enable truly natural human–AI interaction: a world where collaborating with AI feels as fluid and responsive as working with another person, while reasoning and complex task execution happen seamlessly in the background,” OpenAI says.

OpenAI is gearing up to launch ChatGPT 5.6 today, Thursday, July 9.

Most B2B SaaS companies treat CTA as less important instead of giving it the kingly attention it deserves in a SaaS blog article. This is exactly why SaaS companies spend thousands of dollars on ads to rank first on Google, but their actual conversion rate is nothing to write home about. Thousands of readers visit the company’s blog, read articles, but fail to take positive action, which is to buy or sign up for a product.

A more common mistake SaaS blog writers make is to use generic CTAs such as “Click here", and “Learn more,” without actually pinpointing the benefit readers will get by taking the action. Worse still, these CTAs are buried at the bottom of a 2000-word article where the reader will see them only when they have passed the action point.

A high-converting CTA is actually simple and different. Great CTAs align with the reader’s intent and offer a clear benefit before asking for action. This is clearly different from the usual practice of pushing every visitor toward a demo request. This needs to change if you want results.

Here are five CTA strategies that consistently perform better for B2B SaaS blogs.

1. CTA Match Search Intent

Perhaps the most important thing to know is that not everyone visiting your SaaS blog wants to buy the product immediately. Not every blog visitor is ready to talk to sales as soon as they land on the page, so pushing them to take action at that point might not work.

A good example is a blog visitor who is reading "What is SOC 2?" It is most likely that this visitor is researching a problem and may not immediately be ready to book a demo. Compare that to someone reading "Best compliance software for startups.” This person is clearly looking for a product and is therefore much closer to making a purchase.

The takeaway here is that each call-to-action should match why the reader landed on the page. Asking a casual reader to ‘book a demo’ won’t work, but might work if the person landed on the page to read about a specific product.

A strong CTA matches search intent and is tailored for the blog visitor, not generic

The most important question to answer while designing CTAs is “what does the reader want?” If the reader wants information, perhaps offering a resource could be the best CTA. But if the reader is evaluating a product, the CTA should offer a comparison, pricing page, or product tour.

2. Lead with Value, Not the Action

Most SaaS companies focus on telling the blog visitor what to do without first telling them the benefit of the action. Most CTAs fail to offer value; instead, they focus on generic persuasion that blog visitors find coercive and off-putting. The reader is asking “what value will I get from this?” But the CTA is saying “download, book a demo, submit, sign up” without highlighting value.

A great CTA factors in the fact that readers focus on the outcome. They want to know the benefit of the thing you are asking them to do.

CTA should draw attention to the benefit

3. Use Contextual CTAs Throughout the Article

One of the biggest mistakes SaaS companies make is to hide the CTA at the bottom of the article where the reader will see it after many minutes of reading. Sometimes, the reader doesn’t get to see the CTA because they stopped reading at the midpoint and then left the page. So the CTA failed not because it was not well-written, but because the reader didn’t even see it.

That’s why inline CTAs are crucial. At strategic points in the article, the reader should come across contextual CTAs. Put the CTA’s where they naturally fit and not at the bottom. The better approach is to usher in the CTA after explaining the problem a product could solve.

Introduce the CTA after explaining a solution a product could solve

4. Reduce Commitment Before Asking for a Demo

It is a mistake to start pressuring the reader to “book a demo” or “contact sales” as soon as they read the first sentence of the article. Most readers are just checking things out, and asking them to “book a demo” that early is likely going to feel like a high-commitment decision which they are not prepared for.

The solution is to immerse them in the product first. This should happen as early as possible in the article, so that they begin to understand the product and its benefits. Helping the reader understand the product through learning alternatives lowers friction.

Lower-friction alternatives include:

• Watch a product tour

• Try an interactive demo

• Use a free calculator

• Read a customer case study

• Download a template

5. Test CTA Copy, Placement, and Design

While there is no universally perfect CTA. However, little, well-applied changes can go a long way in driving conversion rates. When building an intentional conversion path, context is everything. You have to evaluate:

• The Framing: First-person vs. second-person copywriting hooks.

• Placement: In-line text vs. traditional sidebar banners.

• The timing: Intercepting a reader mid-article vs. waiting until the end of the post.

• The design: Visual cues like color contrast and macro button placement.

Evaluating framing, placement, timing and design might seem unnecessary, but they matter to how the reader sees the product.

A quick CTA checklist

Before the publish button on your SaaS article, a quick check could help you make sure you have ticked all the necessary boxes.

The greatest takeaway here is that high-converting SaaS CTAs are not the most persuasive; they are simply more relevant and tailored to what the blog visitor wants.

Ford has re-engaged its 300 engineers who could not be replaced by AI.

Last year, Ford's chief operating officer, Kumar Galhotra, had said the company was "deploying AI across the entire industrial system".

Galhotra had told investors that Ford rolled out 900 AI-powered cameras in its plants "to detect quality issues at the source and help us mitigate supply disruptions."

However, Bloomberg is reporting that Ford has now rehired its 300 veteran engineers whose experience AI could not match.

Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters that AI is only as good as the information it is trained on.

"Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it. Over prior years, we didn't pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles," he noted, as quoted by the BBC.

Some years ago, when Ovosa Oroye, a social media personality, wanted to receive foreign donations to support a project he was running in Nigeria, the fundraising platform requested that he provide a PayPal account. He told me he had donors standing by, and all that was needed was for him to connect a PayPal account to the fundraising platform and have the funds sent to him for his non-profit.

However, he lost the funding opportunity because he quickly realised that he was not allowed to receive funds through a PayPal account registered in Nigeria.

“I was preparing a project, needed funds, I had some donors from overseas on standby, but the fundraising platform required me to set up PayPal. So I couldn’t get the funds because of that,” Ovosa tells me in a chat.

Counting the losses caused by a lack of access to PayPal

The pain of losing an important funding opportunity simply because he lived in Nigeria was an experience Ovosa was not going to forget in a hurry. “I started keeping a grudge against PayPal since then. I was so pained by the whole thing,” Ovosa tells me.

PayPal first shut down its services in Nigeria as far back as 2004, a time when Nigeria had only 1.5 million internet users, according to one estimate. PayPal cited concerns about internet fraud as a reason for shutting out anyone with a Nigerian IP address. Ten years later, in 2014, the company made a re-entry through a partnership with Nigerian lender, First Bank.

Yet PayPal accounts registered in Nigeria were not allowed to access the full range of services the payment platform offered. Nigerian accounts could only send money or pay for goods on shopping platforms, but never receive funds through PayPal.

PayPal’s decision to restrict Nigerian accounts to “send only” severely affected freelancers, nearly cutting them off from numerous earning opportunities on freelancing platforms. At the time it partnered with First Bank, Nigeria’s fintech sector was still growing and had not yet provided alternative payment platforms such as those available in the country today.

Once a freelancing platform or a hiring company made PayPal their only way of paying for work done, most talented people in Nigeria were cut off, not because they were unqualified, but because even if they did the job, they wouldn’t be able to receive payment.

“I think many Nigerians of my generation genuinely felt excluded. PayPal had become the default way people around the world paid freelancers, bought digital products, and received money online, yet Nigerians were largely locked out of its most important feature: receiving payments,” said Leslie Williams Isah, a creative designer who spoke to me in a chat.

Leslie said freelancers relied on friends, family and partners abroad to get payment for work done.

“We couldn’t get paid, and we had to rely on friends and the kindness of strangers just to receive money on our behalf and wire the equivalent to us. Everyone in India, the US, the EU, and pretty much everywhere else just sent a PayPal link,” he told me.

The PayPal-Paga partnership: Did it solve the problem?

In January 2026, Nigerian fintech company Paga announced a partnership with PayPal, finally allowing accounts registered in Nigeria to receive payments from abroad through PayPal.

“Today, Nigerians can connect PayPal to Paga and use the service more practically and functionally, with money flowing into Naira through the Paga app,” Paga announced in a blog post published January 27.

While Paga has created an interface that allows customers to link their accounts with PayPal, it remains unclear whether all freelancing platforms are aware of the arrangement and have stopped rejecting Nigerians who select PayPal as their preferred withdrawal method.

At least one freelancer I spoke to for this story expressed difficulties connecting their PayPal account to Fivrr, a major freelancing platform.

“I wanted to withdraw from my Fivrr to PayPal, but because my PayPal is a Nigerian account, I can’t withdraw it. I only need PayPal that’s from another country to withdraw it. They rejected the PayPal because is from Nigeria,” one freelancer told me under condition of anonymity. He had made $96 on Fivrr but faced considerable challenges when he tried to withdraw the funds into his PayPal account.

It’s unclear why Fivrr rejected a PayPal account registered in Nigeria, despite the fact that PayPal accounts registered in Nigeria can now withdraw funds through Paga. Fivrr, Paga and PayPal did not respond to requests for comments.

Another freelancer, who did not expressly mention PayPal, maintained that challenges of receiving payments from foreign clients were common if one is based in Nigeria.

“It’s been a lot of challenges, and when it comes to withdrawing from Fivrr as well and receiving straight payment from abroad,” he told me during a chat.

Why a Nigerian Lawyer Launched a Change.org Petition Against PayPal

When Tayo Oviosu, the founder and CEO of Paga, announced that his fintech was partnering with PayPal to enable Nigerians to receive international payments through the platform, he probably did not expect the deluge of anger that followed his post on X.

One would have expected that after 20 years of PayPal’s gate-keeping, Nigerians would be more welcoming. That wasn’t the case. Instead, many people flooded social media with angry posts, accusing PayPal of coming back to Nigeria after realising that the country’s fintech sector was booming. Some went as far as accusing PayPal of withholding customers’ funds.

The outcry was so much so that Najib Adamu Usman, a lawyer, decided to take it up. He filed a petition on Change.org, asking that PayPal be investigated for allegedly freezing customers’ funds. So far, 336 people have signed the petition.

“I saw people on Twitter (X) who lamented how they were affected personally. So, I reached out to some of them. Though most of them were hesitant to share elaborately with me,” Najib tells me in a telephone interview.

Najib said the most common complaint from people he reached out to was that their accounts were abruptly restricted by PayPal. PayPal did not respond to my email asking it to comment on this.

There have been arguments that PayPal account holders who claim their accounts were closed abruptly may have violated the company’s policies. However, Najib said policy violation should not be the reason for a bank to suspend an account.

“Some have claimed that the accounts that were suspended are Nigerian accounts and that at the time they were suspended, PayPal was not extending their services to Nigeria. But the way I look at it is that violating the policy of a bank should not warrant the bank to hold one’s money. There should be a better approach to meting out any disciplinary action,” he said.

Change.org does have the power to adjudicate, and the 336 signatures do not mean PayPal is guilty of any allegations raised, but Najib told me the collected signatures could become useful if the alleged infractions were to be submitted to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Council (FCCPC), which holds organisations accountable on behalf of the public. The body did not respond to my request for comments.

While Nigerians no longer depend entirely on PayPal for making and receiving online payments, grudges held against the fintech remain.

On June 21, the payment technology platform Cardtonic notified customers of an impending app upgrade expected to last only three hours. In an email, the fintech stated that during the upgrade between 12 am and 3 am on June 22, customers will be unable to log into the Cardtonic app.

However, the scheduled maintenance lasted longer than expected. By 3 am on June 22, the maintenance was not completed, making many customers frustrated. By 11 am on June 22, the maintenance was finally completed, and Cardtonic stated that customers could log into the upgraded app.

“Thank you for sticking with us. Kindly update your app to enjoy the latest improvements,” Cardtonic wrote in a social media post.

However, I was unable to log into the app even after performing the update on the Play Store. I funded my dollar card, but was unsure if the funds were there or if I had been charged for a service I subscribed to because I got no notifications. Two days later, I finally figured it out. I checked social media and saw complaints from customers going through the same problems.

How to get your Cardtonic app to work again: Step by step guild

Step 1: Make sure you have your email and password safely stored for easy retrieval.

Step 2: Go to the Play Store or Apple Store and update the Cardtonic app. If you fail to update the app, it won’t work.

Step 3: Open the updated app and log in with your password. Bear in mind that this method did not work for me, and I have seen many complaints from people who said they were unable to log in after performing the update. If you get “App is under maintenance, please check back later,” just know that you are still using the old version, and you won’t be able to log in.

Step 4: If you are unable to log in after the update, delete the app completely from your phone.

Step 5: Go to Google Play Store or Apple App Store and install a new Cardtonic app entirely. This will enable the upgraded version.

Step 6: Open the newly installed app and log in with your email and password. It should work now.

Step 7: If your old password refuses to work, click the "forgot password" button. A link will be sent to you so you can reset the password. You should be able to log in now.

Written by Israel Usulor, technology journalist and digital culture reporter.

In the AI era, a Google search, which used to feel like doing some mini-research on the internet, now feels like chatting with a bot.

This is because Google has introduced what it calls ‘Google AI Overviews’, which, in the company’s own words, “provide a snapshot of key information about a topic or question with links so you can easily explore more on the web.”

Additionally, one can bypass the Google search engine entirely and use Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude or Meta AI to directly get answers to questions.

While this may feel like saving you the time of endlessly scrolling around the web to find the information you need, it does happen that some people don’t like it.

A Reddit user said AI-generated answers caused a clash between her and her boyfriend when she asked him for information.

“I was driving and we were talking and I asked my BF to look up a number and he gave it. Then I asked him too look up another number and he said how interesting this is the same number. Then I asked: are you reading the Google AI answers without looking up the real data? He said everyone does: Then I snapped and sniped: don’t read that to me,” the lady said on Reddit’s AITA, a judgmental community where people share personal stories and ask the public to adjudicate if they were wrong.

Google AI-generated overviews were officially launched in the US on May 14, 2024, and they immediately changed how people used the popular search engine.

When one searches for information using the Google search engine, the Gemini-generated overviews appear on top of the search results, summarising the information the user is seeking.

“At a high level, Google’s AI Overviews use a technique called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). This means the AI doesn’t just rely on its pre-trained knowledge (which could be outdated or generic). Instead, it actively retrieves fresh information from the web and uses that to construct its answer,” writes Si Quan Ong, a content marketer at the software company, Ahrefs, adding, “Well, good news and bad news. Whether you like it or not, search has changed.”

However, some internet users, like the lady in the Reddit story, have refused to accept AI as their search engine, insisting they would stick to the old method of looking up information on proper websites, which they believe are the undiluted sources.

The lady’s boyfriend is different, as he has accepted the new search method and considers it normal.

“This is a thing we’ve had a discussion about before. I hate Google AI. It’s so often wrong, it disseminates bullshit data. And once information goes into the brain, it can’t go out. And before you know it’s just another fact in your brain, and you’re a dumb clown navigating the world with hallucinated fake knowledge. I said to him I beg you, don’t read it. Ignore. Please ignore. I begged. Now I snapped. Don‘t read it to me,” she said. She said her boyfriend dismissed her feelings, and this ended up ruining their night.

Users can opt out of AI search results if they so wish. On its app and desktop versions, there is a warning for users that “Gemini is AI and can make mistakes.”

The comment section was divided among those who see nothing wrong in using AI for search and others who blamed the man for reading his girlfriend AI-generated answers instead of fetching the number from the database.

“While the AI hallucination is definitely a massive issue, the core problem here isn't even his poor media literacy. It’s the blatant disrespect. OP set a very simple, low-stakes boundary ("please don't read this specific thing to me"), and his immediate reaction was to dismiss her feelings because "everybody does it." That's a fundamental communication failure on his end,” says a user identified as Glittering-Cup-5133.

“Dude, it’s just what comes up first when you search things now. He looked up something real quick. It’s not deep. I get hating ai, everyone does, I do too. But it’s not wrong nearly as often as the haters say, unless you’re terrible at asking questions. It’s probably reading the first result he would’ve clicked to him. Google’s AI cites its sources pretty clearly,” says another user named No-Swordfish7872.

In June 2025, Alexandr Wang made global headlines when Meta struck a $14.3 billion deal for a 49% stake in Scale AI and enlisted the startup's founder for a senior AI role.

The deal was worth $14.3 billion, and it ultimately won over Wang and his team to Meta, placing him as the head of Mark Zuckerberg’s newest idea, the Superintelligence Lab. Wang was expected to shore up Meta’s AI department.

But Wang’s story didn’t start at Meta, and he is not new to building powerful teams. He had built Scale AI, an AI training company which was valued at $29 billion after Meta acquired a stake in it in 2025.

From 2020 to 2025, Wang maintained a Substack newsletter where he shared his thoughts on artificial intelligence. In one of the posts in the newsletter shared on November 26, 2020, Wang disclosed that he hired the best people to help him build Scale.

Alexandr Wang’s formular for hiring good people

Wang said his “simple formula for success” was to “hire people who give a shiit.” In his opinion, people must care enough not just about Scale but also about their work in general to make it into his team. Wang said at one point that he personally interviewed everyone who got an offer at a time when the company grew its team by 200 people.

“Over time interviewing, I’ve found that I mainly screen for one key thing: giving a shit. To be more specific, there’s actually two things to screen for: they give a shit about Scale, and they give a shit about their work in general,” Wang wrote in the Substack known as Rational in the Fullness of Time.

To him, giving shiit means being able to align with the company’s vision and to work towards it. Wang said he was convinced people who don’t give a shiit will not do a good job.

“There is no future if we hire people who do not identify with our mission, our product, and our problem,” he wrote.

It is equally important to Wang that those he hires care deeply about their work in general, that they are obsessed with a vision they want to achieve, not just for the company, but for themselves.

Wang said for someone to be hired by Scale, they must be known to care deeply about “something” noting, “If someone is applying to Scale and has never been deeply obsessed about something before, then it’s a bad bet to think Scale will be the first.”

Ultimately, Wang narrowed down his hiring philosophy to six major questions that decide if the applicant gets the job or not. “I have a particular line of questioning around this,” he said. “What’s the hardest you’ve ever worked on something? How many hours were you working a week? Why did you work so hard? Why did you care? When were you the most unmotivated in your life What’s the thing you’re the most proud of? Do you think it was worth it?”

Has Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Wang and Scale AI yielded results?

There have been arguments on whether Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Wang and Scale AI was worth it, but others credit Wang and his team for building Muse Spark for Meta.

Rob May, CEO of the startup Neurometric, told CNBC that the AI community appears to largely ignore Meta at the moment. “I think the AI community largely ignores Meta at this point,” Rob said.

Yet April, Wang’s team at Meta pushed out Muse Spark, Meta’s first proprietary AI model.

“Over the last nine months, Meta Superintelligence Labs rebuilt our AI stack from the ground up, moving faster than any development cycle we have run before,” Meta said in a blog post back in April.

However, cynics have insisted that Meta has yet to regain its AI momentum and is still far from catching up with Anthropic, Google, xAI and OpenAI.

On June 6, Bloomberg’s tech reporter Kurt Wagner asked Wang where he thinks Meta sits today as an AI company compared to a year ago. In his response, Wang highlighted the successes recorded by his team, including the release of Muse Spark.

“I think that the AI industry has gotten obviously very competitive and hot in the past year, and we take that very seriously, but we are really excited,” he noted.

Palo Alto-based AI training company, Micro1, has commited $5 million to its newly launched Company Data Partnerships Referral Program.

Founder, Ali Ansari, announced in a post he shared on LinkedIn, that referers could earn up to $25000 commission for each successful onboarding.

“Today, we’re committing $5,000,000 to launch the micro1 Company Data Partnerships Referral Program. For every company you refer, you can earn up to $25,000. Simply introduce a company, have them identify you as the referrer during onboarding, and once they enter into a paid data partnership with micro1, you’ll receive your referral payout,” Ansari said in the post.

According to information on the company’s website, the Micro1 Company Data Partnerships “help companies to turn anonymized workflows into structured datasets used to train frontier AI models.”

Partnering companies are then paid between $100,000 to $1 million, depending on the scope.

“If you know a company that wants to turn its operational data into a recurring revenue stream while accelerating its adoption of AI through micro1's Data Partnership Program, we’d love an introduction,” Ansari said in his post.

Micro1 notes on its website that partnering companies will maintain control over the process, deciding what to share and what to withhold.

“We are not asking for unrestricted access to company systems or sensitive internal information. Every partnership is carefully scoped and reviewed, with privacy requirements tailored to your business.”

AI models such as Gemini can now generate lyrics, voice and instrumentals, and in fact, produce an entire song from scratch. Today, everyone is a potential musician, provided they can write good prompts into Gemini.

A bride thought it would be nice to use some AI-generated songs for her wedding dance, but the ‘DJ’, who happens to be her brother-in-law, has said he is not going to play the songs for the sole reason that they are AI-generated.

“My sister-in-law asked me to DJ her wedding a few weeks back. I own some decent speakers, and I’m the music person in the family, so I said I’d be happy to. Fast forward to today. The day before the wedding. I messaged her asking for the list of scheduled songs (father-daughter dance, etc.), and she sent back half a dozen songs generated using some random AI song generator,” the poster, identified as _TheReposter_, said in the story, which he shared on IATA, one of Reddit’s most judgmental subreddits.

DJ rejects AI-generated songs

While he said he is not completely anti-AI, the DJ noted that playing AI-generated songs at a wedding would be a dent on his reputation since he prides himself as a musician.

“Now I’m not strongly anti-ai like some people, I use it for work and to answer random questions. But I’m a semi-professional musician, and music has been my passion for most of my life. It honestly feels immoral for me to publicly support AI music like this. I haven’t responded to her yet. She sent the songs and I just left her on read, but I’ll have to see her this evening for the dress rehearsal,” the poster said.

Redditors in the comment section were not impressed, with many of them lashing out at the poster, insisting there was no good reason to refuse playing AI-generated songs at a family member’s wedding. Most people crucified the DJ for not having the AI conversation with the bride earlier, but he insisted he only got to know of the songs a day before the event.

“YTA. Tell her NOW. She needs time to find other songs. Also why didnt you ask for the list earlier? The timeline is insanely short!” Said one redditor identified as LunaLittleBlue.

However, the DJ insisted he was not doing anything wrong and noted that it was better for him to set up the equipment and leave than play the songs.

“I am pretty set on telling her that she can use our equipment and I’ll help setup, but I won’t be the person on stage controlling the playlist if it includes any AI music,” the DJ said.

In an update, the poster said he had a conversation with his sister-in-law, and things were resolved peacefully, and she agreed to discard most of the AI-generated songs.

“Except she was still stuck on one song. The first dance. She really wanted her first dance to be one of the AI songs,” the poster said.

Apparently, to be on the side of peace, the DJ decided to set up his equipment and mount the turntable during the bridal party before the wedding. According to him, he decided to play one of the AI-generated songs which the bride wanted so badly. Things didn’t end as expected.

“I showed up shortly after they talked and decided to just setup my equipment and play the song for the bridal party. Pretty quickly the song was shut down by the bridesmaids. They were worried about such a special moment being an AI song, and also that the song kinda sucked,” he said.

Some Redditors were on his side. They insist that if the DJ were truly a musician, it would be insulting to play AI-generated songs in public.

“NTA. As a musician, I'd be deeply insulted. But you do need to bring it up ASAP, maybe offer to work on a better playlist for her with real artists in,” said one Redditor known as coryluscorvix.

Some people just don’t like AI

The saga between the DJ and his sister-in-law just shows how AI has taken hold in many people’s lives, but also reveals how others are refusing to move with the trend.

In a 2025 piece, the BBC reported on a London-based woman named Sabine Zetteler who has completely rejected AI. Zetteler, who runs a communication agency, denounced AI and the associated loss of jobs that have been predicted to happen as a result of AI automation.

“What’s the point of sending something we didn’t write, reading a newspaper written by bots, listening to a song created by AI, or me making a bit more money by sacking my administrator who has four kids? Where’s the joy, love or aspirational betterment even just for me as a founder in that? It means nothing to me,” she noted.

For Gavin, it is his grandfather’s abandoned 1993 Camaro Z28 car, which he inherited and restored days after the US Air Force veteran died of cancer.

Ohio-based WD Detailing got a call from Gavin, who wanted to restore his grandfather’s car that had been parked since 2021. The Chevy Camaro Z28 has only been driven 5309 miles since it was purchased in 2017.

@wddetailingRestoring Deceased Grandpa’s ABANDONED “Bumblebee” Camaro SS For His Grandson! #detailing #carwash #satisfying #cleaning #cardetailing

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The Camero was a prized possession

“It was one of the owner’s most prized possessions until one day, the family’s world changed,” WD Detailing said in a YouTube video. “The oldest grandson reached out to us with an urgent message. His grandfather was battling stage four cancer, and the doctors told the family may only have a couple of weeks left. The hope was to bring this Camero back to life for him to see it all clean. But before that could happen, we received a call.”

That dream wasn’t accomplished. Gavin’s grandfather had passed even before the team at WD Detailing could start work on the prized piece. His grandfather’s death made the restoration of the car even more appealing to Gavin, who wanted to keep it to honour the veteran’s memory.

“My grandfather, I knew him by calling him ‘Papa’. He was the coolest guy. I mean, literally the best friend I could ask for. He was in the Air Force. He was the only guy I don’t have any single negative memory of. Just saying he was a good man would be an understatement. He bought it in 2017, and he drove it for a bit,” Gavin said amidst tears.

The Camero had not been driven since 2021

Though the engine revved to life when the ignition was turned, the Camero could benefit from a lot of cleaning. “The last time it was washed….I washed it in 2021. About five years, it’s been outside,” Gavin informed the WD Detailing team who came to pick the barned car.

Gavin’s Papa had a bad accident before COVID in 2020 and had withdrawn from driving the car due to the shock and a hip problem he developed. Since then, no one had touched it until there was an urgent need to restore it.

The team at WD Detailing went the extra mile for Gavin, as they not only cleaned the car but also installed brand new tyres, all for free. He was blown away when he beheld the car after the transformation.

“Oh my God! I could literally see myself on it. That’s insane, that is absolutely insane,” Gavin said in reaction to the cleanliness of the car. He was emotionally moved, promising to keep the car for as long as he lives.

“This is his legacy. This car, which will be with me till the day I die.”

YouTube users were moved by the video. “I lost my grandpa 2 years ago, and what he said about his grandpa is 100% how I felt about mine. What he said really hit home and I’m sad to hear that he wasn’t able to see the car come back to its former glory,” said a user identified in the comment section as @Ermatinger503.

“I'm sad for him losing a family member, but he can remember his smile every time he drives it. Great job cleaning it up, amazing SS Camero,” said yet another users known as @blahblah4125.

But what is a jailbreak?

Every artificial intelligence model is built with safety guardrails. Those guardrails prevent the model from providing information that could help users harm themselves or others.

For powerful models such as Cladue Fable 5, those guardrails are particularly stronger because a successful misuse could be dangerous. Think of a jailbreak as opening the cage door and removing the restraints that were designed to keep the lion under control.

A 'jailbreak', therefore, is when a user successfully manipulates an AI model to give out details that could assist in causing harm. This could include guidance that facilitates cyberattacks or dangerous biological research.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Axios reported that Amazon discovered and disclosed a jailbreak that could threaten US national security. They informed the government, which in turn triggered export control measures to stop foreigners, including those in the US, from accessing Fable 5. Anthropic decided it was best to recall the two products entirely.

However, the company has argued that the reported 'jailbreak' could be performed with already available models, such as ChatGPT 5.5.

"Our understanding is that one potential jailbreak was shared with the government. We have reviewed a report that we believe is the basis of the government's directive and validated that the level of capability displayed there is widely available from other models (including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5), and is used every day by the defenders who keep systems safe," the company said in a blog post.

Amazon invested in Anthropic

Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic. In April, Reuters reported that the company is investing $25 billion in Anthropic. In return, Anthropic has committed to spending up to $100 billion on Amazon's cloud technologies over the next 10 years.

Analysts have argued that it is unlikely Amazon would intentionally harm or undermine a company in which it is a major investor. The company has said governments usually seek its counsel on potential security risks, but such discussions are not disclosed to the public.

"As a leading cloud provider that serves a large number of private and public sector customers, it's not uncommon for governments to seek our counsel on potential security risks. When they occur, we don't share the details of these discussions," a spokesperson from Amazon said as quoted by Axios.

Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 has become a darling among full-stack developers. Vibe coding, which means using AI to build apps and letting it generate most of the code, has become increasingly popular among developers.

“Claude will build you an iOS app. A real one. SwiftUI, StoreKit, widgets, live activities, the whole thing. It took me longer to write the PRDs than it did to get working builds. That part is not the hard part anymore,” said one software developer who shared their experience on r/ClaudeAI, a subreddit for Claude users.

Developer faces difficulties selling apps he built

The Reddit user, identified as Pristine Prompts, argued that once Claude removed much of the difficulties involved in building software, selling the finished product became the bigger challenge. In the comment section, many developers admit they never thought selling a product would be the new problem, more cumbersome than building it.

“I have 4 shipped apps on the App Store. I have 5 more in active development. My total revenue across all of them is $0. My total users is roughly my wife and one guy in Finland, who I suspect downloaded it by accident,” Pristine Prompts said in his post, which has 2,400 upvotes.

His experience sounded like an eye-opener for many of his developer colleagues in the comments section. Some seem to agree that building an app is no longer the problem, but others disagree.

NVIDIA, Athropic and OpenAI are hiring 544 new people for sales and marketing

Yet, even the big AI labs and tech companies, such as Anthropic PBC, OpenAI, and Nvidia, dedicate a significant chunk of their workforce to sales, marketing and business development.

The Algorithm Post checked the career pages of Anthropic, OpenAI and Nvidia and found that many of the open roles are for sales, go-to-market and marketing.

For instance, of the 731 open roles on OpenAI’s career page as of June 14, 75 (10.26%) are for sales, GTM and marketing. The career page of NVIDIA has 2000 open roles, out of which the company is hiring 385 people (19.25%) for sales, marketing and business development. Similarly, Anthropic is hiring 382 people, out of which 84 (22%) will be deployed to sales, marketing and branding.

The hiring data suggests that even companies at the forefront of AI continue to invest heavily in sales, marketing and go-to-market teams, underscoring the importance of distribution alongside product development in the AI era. The bigger question now is ‘how do you get people to buy and use what you have built?’

“The barrier to building is gone. Claude dissolved it. What nobody tells you is that the barrier to getting users was never the same barrier. They were never connected. You didn’t use to notice because they both felt impossible at the same time,” Pristine Prompts said quiet frankly.

He said he has realised that the work is not done when he finishes vibe coding and the app is ready for use. The truth, according to him, is that the real work starts after building.

“I’m not saying don’t build. I’m saying I’ve been confusing “I finished the thing” with “I did the work.” Finishing the app is like finishing a restaurant menu. You still have to get people in the door. Distribution is the job,” he noted.

Not everyone agreed that AI has fundamentally changed the challenge. Some commenters argued that most apps have always struggled to attract users and generate revenue, regardless of how they were built. Parboman, one user in the comment section, argued that not getting users for a new app is not unusual.

“And if you just keep building, nothing will change. If you build for yourself with no expectation of making any money, things are great. The simple fact that you have 4 apps and 5 more on the way, and basic maths means 99.9% of new apps will not make any significant money, and this is not new,” they said.

How many people used the Apple App Store in 2025?

Available data suggest that the situation is not all gloomy. According to Apple, the App Store alone recorded 850 million users weekly from 175 countries in 2025. The report, published June 4, 2026, noted that the App Store ecosystem recorded $1.4 trillion in developer billings during the same period. It stated that consumer-facing AI apps recorded 4x growth, indicating that the market is there for developers who are solving problems.

How to sell AI-built products

The question then becomes how developers can turn AI-built products into businesses. Experts say the answer starts with solving real problems.

Muddu Sudhakar, the co-founder of Aisera, now a Senior Vice President at Salesforce, said “Businesses should sell a solution to a problem.”

While the Reddit discussion focused on consumer apps built by smaller developers, business leaders argue that the principle remains the same: products must solve meaningful problems before customers will pay for them.

People do not care how an app was built so long as it solves their problems. Vibe coders should build apps that offer solutions to serious problems. “Customers will buy a platform when multiple solutions are acquired, and there are the right integrations. Customers don't have free money sitting on the side just to invest in platforms,” Sudhakar said in a piece published on Forbes.

Anthropic has spent months warning the public of the power of Claude Mythos before eventually releasing Fable 5, a version of Mythos with restrictions and guardrails.

It released Claude Mythos 5 to trusted cybersecurity partners who are members of its Project Glasswing, a body it formed to sensitise critical stakeholders on the powers of Mythos, which it said is able to read code sources and detect vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors.

Barely three days after the release of the two AI models, the US Government pulled the plug on them, insisting that foreign nationals be stopped from accessing them.

Anthropic bars all users from accessing Fable 5 and Mythos 5

In response to the US Government’s directive, Anthropic said it is suspending access to Fable 5 and Mythos to all users, not just foreign nationals.

“The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected”, Anthropic said in a blog post shared on June 12.

According to Anthropic, the US Government only issued verbal evidence of a potential jailbreak of Fable 5’s guardrails, but noted the company did not receive many details.

A jailbreak in artificial intelligence refers to a technique used to bypass or defeat a model's built-in safety guardrails.

“Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or “jailbreaking” Fable 5,” Anthropic wrote.

However, Anthropic, which recently filed to go public, said it believes the directive was the result of a misunderstanding, insisting that it had installed sufficient guardrails on the two models, making it impossible for bad actors to misuse them.

“Our understanding is that one potential jailbreak was shared with the government. We have reviewed a report that we believe is the basis of the government's directive and validated that the level of capability displayed there is widely available from other models (including OpenAI’s GPT-5.5), and is used every day by the defenders who keep systems safe. We will share more details over the next 24 hours,” the company said.

Anthropic’s calls for AI guardrails

Anthropic has been at the forefront, calling for policies that could put sufficient guardrails on emerging AI technologies. On June 10, Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, released a blog post in which he compared the government’s speed in policy development to that of Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings.

“In one of the side plots to The Lord of the Rings, two of the Hobbits attempt to rouse Treebeard—a wise but ponderous sentient tree—to defend his forest from an army that is cutting it down. The problem is that Treebeard operates at a very different speed than the Hobbits. It takes him a full day simply to say hello to another tree, so getting him and his peers to act fast enough is nearly impossible,” he wrote.

Some industry leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, have said some of the warnings about potential dangers of AI misuse were “fear-based marketing”.

“There are people in the world who, for a long time, have wanted to keep AI in the hands of a smaller group of people. You can justify that in a lot of different ways. It is clearly incredible marketing to say, ‘We have built a bomb, we are about to drop it on your head. We will sell you a bomb shelter for $100 million,” he said in April during his appearance on Ashley Vance’s podcast, Core Memory.

Dani Bauer, who joined the developer communication team at OpenAI, posted a screenshot of her token usage on LinkedIn.

According to her post, she has burned 11.2 billion Codex tokens in four months of joining the Sam Altman-led company.

On her peak day, Dani burned 1.9 billion tokens. She is currently on a 32-day streak. The Algorithm Post has reached out to Dani for comments.

What is tokkenmaxxing?

In the AI era, many companies are eager to adopt AI and deploy models across different parts of their operations. As businesses seek to integrate AI into everyday workflows, some have encouraged employees to make extensive use of AI tools, a trend that some observers have dubbed "tokenmaxxing", which is the practice of maximizing AI usage and token consumption.

However, some organisations are reportedly scaling back on token usage, with some closing leaderboards earlier created to track compliance.

In May, Bloomberg reported that Uber placed a limit on how many tokens could be used per month.

According to the report, Uber staffers who use AI models are only allowed a maximum of $1500 worth of tokens per agentic coding tool in what is seen as a cost-cutting measure.

In May, AXIOS reported that an unnamed enterprise user of Anthropic’s Claude burned $500 million worth of tokens in a single month.

So why exactly is Google involved with mosquitoes, and what does the company hope to achieve?

Mosquitoes are responsible for more human deaths than any other animal in the world. According to the World Mosquito Program (WMP), the insects contribute to more than 1 million deaths and infect about 700 million people with diseases such as dengue, malaria, yellow fever, and Zika each year.

Remarkably, only female mosquitoes bite humans; male mosquitoes do not. As a result, female mosquitoes are responsible for transmitting diseases such as malaria, dengue, West Nile virus, Zika, and chikungunya. Through its Debug project, Google aims to help curb the spread of these diseases by reducing populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes.

To achieve this goal, the company is breeding mosquitoes and separating them into male and female groups using highly precise AI-powered computer vision technology, The Guardian reports.

After breeding millions of male mosquitoes, Google uses a mosquito-control approach that involves infecting them with a naturally occurring bacterium known as Wolbachia. When Wolbachia-carrying male mosquitoes mate with wild females that do not carry the bacterium, the eggs fail to hatch, preventing reproduction and gradually reducing mosquito populations.

The male mosquitoes are then released into the wild, specifically to mate with the females called Aedes aegypti species, which is responsible for spreading diseases such as dengue, Zika, and yellow fever. Google hopes this approach will gradually reduce populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes and help curb the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses.

Google is not the only organisation that uses this method. The World Malaria Program also notes that introducing the Wolbachia bacteria into Aedes aegypti is very effective.

"We introduce Wolbachia into bacteria into Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in our laboratory, Wolbachia mosquitoes are released for 3-6 months. They mate with mosquitos, passing on Wolbachia. Wolbachia spreads to nearly all mosquitoes and remains in the local mosquito population once releases end. The community is protected from long-term without the need for more releases," the WMP says in its website.