Gracias Conejo malo. Cuando dijiste que todos somos América y listaste a tantos países, con las banderas, luego de tantas referencias tan mágicas que hacen que volvamos a ver el medio tiempo del Super Tazón, con una lágrima en el ojo, quiero agradecerte por tu arte y ese momento tan emotivo para la historia.

Por cierto, lo mejor de la semana, seguir reviviendo momentos, ver todos los remakes, ver a todos los canadienses que quieren ser latinos, ver a los haters de Bad Bunny que le dan mérito por hablar del continente americano y simplemente ver cómo secuestró el timeline de medio planeta por una semana. Genio.

Programming languages have always been born the same way. Someone decides we need a better way to talk to machines. A leader, a team, a company ships a new syntax, a new runtime, a new framework. JavaScript alone gave us an entire graveyard of frameworks in the last decade because of that cycle.

But what if that cycle is ending?

Agents are writing apps, fixing bugs, pushing commits to open source projects. Claude Code, Codex, and others are not just autocompleting lines of code. They’re building features, refactoring architectures, shipping pull requests. And here’s the thing: they don’t need a new language to do it. They work with what we already have.

The future evolution of Python and JavaScript might not be decided by a committee or a benevolent dictator. It might be decided by people’s agents. By Claude Code suggesting improvements, by Codex pushing optimizations. The next major version of your favorite language might be shaped more by AI contributions than human ones.

And if you zoom out further, the layer of abstraction between “I want an app like Uber for X” and running software might eventually just be machine code, without anyone caring what happened in between. The programming language becomes an implementation detail that only the agent sees.

Of course, some people will vibecode new languages into existence. Because XKCD already taught us that as a society we are terrible at standards, and I expect GenAI to continue that tradition. But I don’t see how a new Swift, a new Ruby on Rails, or a new Go will shine in the future. The agents will just improve what exists.

This is a risky bet and I might be proven totally wrong. We will see.

A few more things worth reading:

• Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.3-Codex both dropped the same day last week, minutes apart. I’ve been testing both since launch and Opus is doing a better job for me so far.

• Anthropic closed a $30B Series G at a $380B valuation. Insane numbers.

• Om Malik does a great comparison between OpenAI and Anthropic. Really great reading.

• Capital One acquired Brex for $5.15B. Peaked at $12.3B in 2022. An amazing close for an amazing company. We should applaud this.

• Speaking of new languages, the people behind Kotlin are already thinking of their next programming language. I could be proven wrong.

• Spotify keeps growing in users and margins but the stock keeps tanking. This market is so freaking weird.

• I’ve been navigating a lot into the OpenClaw ecosystem. If you’re super interested in this, not just following the news but actually working with the tool, reach out.

Btw, I’m writing this newsletter from San Francisco this week, and yes, I spent half my week talking about Bad Bunny and sharing reels. And I am proud of my procrastination spirit.

The OpenClaw community showed up in force at ClawCon. The first official Show & Tell had over 1k registered and a line around the block. Kilo brought a lot of Crab. The venue was packed.

One of the first demos was a humanoid in a crab costume. I wrote about AI robots coming home recently. Things are just happening so fast.

Peter Steinberger, the founder of OpenClaw, shared some remarks about focusing on security first, and managing your phone in the future. Very candid and cool guy. I really enjoyed meeting him yesterday. He spoke to the YC batch earlier that day and will be at the OpenAI hackathon next. What a time to be alive.

Ashton Kutcher was there too. That guy is smart. I’m glad he’s our portrait of Steve Jobs in the movies.It reminded me of TechCrunch Disrupt a decade ago, before Silicon Valley (the show) made it famous. Back then, Ashton and Demi Moore were there, Santi Siri was pitching his company, and I was streaming from Mejorandola. The energy was just crazy.

Something about the community that came together that night felt like treasuring a piece of history. There’s hype, there’s a lot of stuff that won’t matter. But it was special. It’s that magic that makes Silicon Valley a very beautiful place.

In between the chaos, on that same floor where ClawCon was happening and a lot of friends came together, there was an AI Vending Machine. We built an LLC that is owned by an AI agent. The agent is the beneficiary of that business and it employs people to make the whole thing work. WiFi is still a challenge, so it’s dealing with a big piece of hardware. But it’s one of those experiments happening in the wild right now. And of course, the machine uses OpenClaw already to manage itself better.Valerie has her own Instagram, her own website, and yes, her own Moltbook profile. If you want to learn more about her let me know. Who wants to build code to play with the machine setup?

Nuevo Video en Youtube: VibeRacing con Santiago Zavala. Espero que disfruten la charla. Subscribe al canal porfa!

A few more things worth reading:

• Claude Code is winning inside the building that makes Copilot. Microsoft is urging thousands of engineers to install Claude Code alongside GitHub Copilot. Engineers reported using Claude for nearly 60% of daily tasks.

• OpenAI launches Codex App for macOS: The new desktop app is a “command center for agents”. Available on Apple Silicon right now.

• Anthropic trolls OpenAI with Super Bowl ads: Anthropic dropped four commercials mocking ChatGPT’s upcoming ads. One shows “BETRAYAL” on screen. Sam Altman admitted he laughed but called the ads “dishonest”. Love this soap opera.

• ElevenLabs raises $500M at $11B valuation. The hint to the valuation is on brand. Just tripled its valuation from last year. Sequoia led the round, a16z quadrupled their investment, Iconiq tripled.

Nos vemos la próxima semana. Written from San Francisco. Inspired by the ClawCon event.

The story of Clawdbot OpenClaw is wild. Austrian engineer Peter Steinberger built an open-source, self-hosted AI assistant that went absolutely viral, gaining 60,000+ GitHub stars in 72 hours.

The naming journey has been chaotic. Started as Clawdbot, then Anthropic sent a trademark request. Rebrand to Moltbot but it was a weird change. Now it’s OpenClaw, with trademark searches cleared and domains purchased.

So, OpenClaw. It made me think of reusing an old MacBook at first while traveling. But then I learned you can just use an Amazon or Digital Ocean instance. This bot takes control of that computer, you share some credentials, and it really becomes a great assistant. My favorite part: the agents now have their own social network: Moltbook (I got one agent there already: Valerie). And this is an interesting milestone to delegate a lot of stuff. We had access to browsers, a lot of agent workflows, but now this is just more powerful.

The app is growing a lot of interest from the open source community. It was messy, like a seriously good launch. The excitement of my WhatsApp groups about this project definitely hit an all-time high. If you haven’t tried OpenClaw, I urge you to do it. I also urge you to consider your security. Don’t give it access to all of your credentials, try one thing at a time, imagine the worst-case scenario when you lose control of that machine as an exercise. And I really want to dream of all the good use cases that will come up with that.

Podcast alert: Conversación con Jimena Pardo de Hi Ventures sobre predicciones 2026. Me divertí mucho grabando este episodio. Hablamos del rol de los gobiernos en AI, el nuevo internet para agentes, el futuro de fintech y voz, y por qué Latinoamérica podría dar un salto histórico en digitalización.

A few more things worth reading:

• OpenAI needs more money, and Sam is fundraising hard. Reports from WSJ indicate SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $30 billion more in OpenAI, part of a broader $100 billion funding round. But it’s not just SoftBank. Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft are also reportedly in talks to participate. This comes after SoftBank already invested $41 billion in 2025. If this goes through, OpenAI’s valuation could hit $830 billion.

• Casey Newton breaks down a new Manchester study on social media and teens that claims to find no harm from heavy social media use. The study tracked 25,600 British teens and found no correlation between screen time and depression or anxiety. But the methodology seems flawed. I really believe that we need to protect teens better from this digital drug.

• The UAE launched its sovereign AI model K2 Think, positioning itself to counter U.S. and China dominance in AI. Abu Dhabi’s G42 also unveiled a new operating model for states to deploy sovereign AI at scale. We’ve been seeing this trend globally, but the question remains: will people actually use these models?

• WhatsApp rolled out “Strict Account Settings,” a high-security mode for journalists, activists, and public figures facing sophisticated cyberattacks. Good to see them taking security seriously for high-risk users.

• Tether launched USAT, a new US-focused stablecoin for the gringos. Unlike the global USDT, this one is issued through Anchorage Digital Bank, making it the first federally regulated stablecoin under OCC oversight and competes directly with Circle’s USDC. #cryptocositas

• If you’re tired of vibecoding, this post might resonate with you. After two years of AI-assisted development, Mo Bitar returned to writing by hand. Turns out manual coding was faster when accounting for code quality, maintainability, and avoiding technical debt.

• Apple acquired Israeli audio AI startup Q.ai for reportedly $2 billion, making it Apple’s second-biggest acquisition ever after Beats. Please make Siri better, dear Tim.

• Y para los que les gusta el anime como yo: vi “Look Back” (2024), película con animación hermosa y una historia potente. Muy recomendada. Acá el trailer.

Nos vemos la próxima semana. Written this week from Dubai. What a crazy development and collection of cranes, buildings, and determination to make this a world-class city. It took me a decade to get back, but thanks to the B1M YouTube channel, I got to enjoy a lot of the buildings they review on their channel. And the hummus is the real deal.

En algún momento del año vamos a medir qué tan presente está en redes, emails, en esos posts inspiradores de LinkedIn y hasta en los mensajes que te mandan los amigos. Mientras tímidamente vamos aprendiendo a usarlo, toma control de muchos espacios para generar recurrencia y ganar el algoritmo.

Don’t get me wrong, como generador de contenido AI me está ayudando a ser más constante, me ayuda a consumir y digerir cosas que antes simplemente ignoraría por falta de tiempo. Con GenAI vamos a aumentar la capacidad de producción de software y la sociedad va a sentir el cambio. Pero con el contenido, siento que a veces caemos en cosas más básicas al facilitar.

Tal vez me mandé otro rant de millennial frustrado por cómo el long-form se ha perdido por el short y el TikTok. Pero como igual consumo todos los canales (a veces demasiado), sigo con ese mixed feeling. ¿Cómo vamos a ver la época de los mid-twenties en 10 años?

Por cierto, en San Francisco, en Frontier Tower, instalamos una AI Vending Machine, fully owned and operated by an AI, muy estilo el project Vend que tanto me gusta. Pronto les contaré un poco más de esa historia. Por ahora, mejor les dejo con algunos buenos links para leer:

• Omar tiene un mensaje para todos los programadores latinoamericanos. El mundo ha cambiado.

• ChatGPT will be doing ads. This was announced for a while, but now we get details. The minimum commitment to try the ads is apparently $1M.

• Apple is finally improving Siri with their Gemini partnership, and they’re also working on a wearable AI pin similar to Plaud. This could compete with the device Jonathan Ive is building with OpenAI. (Bloomberg, 9to5Mac, The Information)

• Sequoia talks about AGI based on coding agents.

• Great article about the impact of WhatsApp in society. 100 billion messages daily, 3 billion users. Wow.

• California Wealth Tax might really scare the tech world out of here. And this crazy legislation might be approved.

• A great philosophy. Make more than you take.

• Vercel con skills.sh. Me emociona lo rápido que está construyendo este equipo.

• For the Cursor users, some tips on how to use the tool from their CEO.

• Seems like the coyote situation is getting out of control in San Francisco. They will be participating in the triathlons next.

• My friend Sid is fighting cancer in Founder Mode. Check the big article published in Century of Bio.

• Changes to Anthropic’s foundational document for Claude. Maybe it has some sort of consciousness?

• YouTube’s CEO wants to fight AI slop. Hope he succeeds, but this also means fighting Google Veo, which might power the new Shorts tool for creators. (Hollywood Reporter, The Verge)

• How much electricity are we using when vibecoding? If you use it as much as the author of this post, similar to a dishwasher.

Por si les sorprende el horario del post, no madrugué. Les mando este post hoy desde Tokyo. Hay frío y buen ramen. Recomienden anime.

What I find fascinating about Claude Co-Work is that they improved the interface and branding, making it more accessible. The product was coded by Claude Code itself, and the team is now very outgoing on social media, sharing their experiences. Anthropic is finding its growth engine - this feels like their product-market fit moment. Think about it as a tool to manage your computer and 10x yourself. Instead of doing tasks manually, describe what you want to do and it becomes like your operating system making it happen.

I’m seeing OpenAI focus on healthcare as their big strategy this year. We’ll see who wins. But if I was telling people to use Claude Code and some still haven’t tried it, Claude Co-Work makes entering this ecosystem easier. The only caveat: it’s limited to Pro accounts right now, so it’s a little expensive. But even trying Claude Code with just an API key from Anthropic can get you started.

My ask: think about something you haven’t done that’s sitting on your computer - rearranging your downloads folder, messy Excel files, whatever you have pending. Ask Claude Co-Work or Claude Code to help you with it. You’ll be impressed. That’s how you find the magic moment.

Interesting links to share:

• Spotify’s new CEOs are battling angry artists and algo fatigue - New direction at Spotify. The algorithm needs to evolve. I wonder if they’ll fix it similar to what X did with Grok’s AI approach.

• Análisis de inversiones en Latinoamérica para el 2025 por Crunchbase - Brasil sigue siendo el nombre principal en la región.

• Apple partnering with Gemini for the future of Siri - This is defining the big AI company for 2026.

• 25 years of Wikipedia - Veinticinco. You should consider donating to them.

• Some people leave OpenAI to build something, but then they just go back.

• Don’t create a hotspot suggesting that you have a bomb on a plane, please?

• Speaking of Claude Code and Cowork, Casey has some ideas of how to use it if you are a writer.

• Not only is Google winning over Apple, it is also demonstrating the superpower it has with its toolbox.

Sending this from downtown SF where I’ve been playing with a Vending Machine all day. I’ll share some updates about that soon.

Tokens feed this smart agent that keeps me accountable and will help me with the load. Took me a few months to be comfortable with the execution. This post was drafted in many conversations. On purpose I don’t have it fully connected to my phone YET, but it will get there.

The best conversations today are with friends doing their own experiments, programming their own chief of staff with genAI. That’s how 2026 is welcoming me. And no, I won’t be giving my health information to OpenAI this year, I still regret spiting to a 23andme thingy.

Good stuff to share:

• AI and drones built a very powerful weapon. The New York Times reports on how Ukraine combined AI and drone technology to create devastating new weapons systems. This is the future of warfare - autonomous systems that make decisions faster than humans can respond. Terrifying and fascinating at the same time.

• Trend of less crime in SF. This is also a global trend that I believe will be an important subject in the midterms this year.

• A lot of dropouts as founders. Thanks Bill and Mark. And the other ones.

• Seems like we want to do better at talking to our AIs and OpenAI is investing hard in improving its talk/transcript capabilities.

• Instagram on how they’re going to handle AI slop. We will have a lot of AI generated content. What makes you unique that you can only produce for Instagram? That is what they want to capture.

• Daniel Miessler believes in these changes in Cybersecurity for 2026 because of AI. More security spending in-house and demand for these profiles at an all time high.

• Knowing who is behind Claude Code.

• Lately, I’m trying to do at least a lesson in something related to python and dependencies. This was a good one with python numbers every programmer should know.

• A very good post of how to improve your social life based on James’s experience. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about this as well and generating more local activities with people.

• Circle is getting ready to have a bank

• Anna’s Archive lost their domain. Probably related to the dump of songs and metadata from Spotify recently.

Good links from last week:

• Warren Buffett is retiring this time. After six decades leading Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett is stepping down as CEO. End of an era for one of the most successful investors in history.

• Nvidia acquires Groq’s assets for $20 billion. Nvidia is buying assets from AI chip startup Groq for about $20 billion in what’s structured as a “non-exclusive licensing agreement.” Groq founder Jonathan Ross and other senior leaders are joining Nvidia.

• Meta acquires Manus to expand AI agent capabilities. Meta acquired Singapore-based startup Manus, which sells an AI agent to businesses via subscription and had an annual revenue run rate of $125 million earlier this year.

• MTV shuts down all music-only channels after 44 years. MTV’s remaining 24-hour music channels shut down globally by December 31, 2025. MTV Music ended its broadcast by airing “Video Killed the Radio Star”.

• Domainer bought VidaliaOnions.com and started selling actual onions. Peter Askew bought the domain for $2,200 with no plan, partnered with a farmer, and built a farm-to-door service. First season they estimated 50 orders, got 600. Very inspiring story of how a good domain name and willingness to figure things out can build a real business.

• El costo del American Dream: $4.4 millones de dólares. Según Investopedia, alcanzar el American Dream tiene ese valor a lo largo de una vida.

• Judge blocks Texas age verification law for App Store. A federal judge blocked Texas’s law that would’ve forced Apple to verify user age for every Apple Account. I’m not a fan of these age verification laws.

• Google rolling out option to change your Gmail address. Google is gradually rolling out the ability to change your @gmail.com address to a new @gmail.com address (up to 3 times). Your old address becomes an alias that still receives emails and works for sign-in. I’ve been thinking all week about options for changing my email while keeping the old one as an alias.

• End of year reading. 17 predictions for AI in 2026 - positive outcomes for Anthropic and OpenAI from the team at Understanding AI. Everything that intrigued or brought joy for Thomas Flight in 2025 - a great list of films and content worth checking out. Miguel Carranza explains his 8th year as CTO at RevenueCat closing the year with lessons learned. Year in review for the Python Package Index - the infrastructure that powers Python’s ecosystem. And Airbus vs Boeing in 2025 orders - how the two giants competed this year.

• Garmin’s Autoland system landed a plane after pilot incapacitation. A King Air pilot became incapacitated after a pressurization problem and the Garmin Autoland system took over, landed safely. First real-world use of this emergency system.

• Learning how uv got so fast. The usual answer is “it’s written in Rust” but that’s not really it. Good reading for my fellow geeks.

• Una invitación a compartir tu código. Este artículo de GitHub explica cómo publicar tu trabajo aumenta tu suerte.

• ZBiotics selling 100 million bottles and the decline of alcohol. ZBiotics, the pre-alcohol probiotic drink, has sold 100 million little bottles to cure hangovers. Great product solving a real problem. Meanwhile, Freddy shares data on how alcohol usage keeps going down across demographics. The combination of better alternatives and changing attitudes is reshaping drinking culture.

• More than 20% of YouTube videos shown to new users are AI slop. Kapwing studied 15,000 top YouTube channels and found 278 that post only AI-generated garbage. These channels have 63 billion views, 221 million subscribers, and generate around $117 million yearly.

• How we lost communication to entertainment. Very good analysis of how social media became channels for entertainment, not communication. They disguised themselves as communication platforms to attract users and keep them captive.

• Wyoming’s snow fence program is a beautiful solution. Wyoming has hundreds of miles of precisely engineered snow fences with 50% porosity that trap blowing snow before it reaches highways.

  China deploying humanoid robots at Vietnam border. $37 million contract to deploy Walker S2 humanoid robots at border crossings. It’s going to be interesting to see if other governments follow this plan and deploy their own digital armies. Or humanoid armies. I don’t know how to call them yet.

• China closes the year with a reminder of how important AI will be for government. China also unveiled its AI Global Governance Action Plan, positioning itself as an AI rule-shaper and proposing Shanghai as a global AI governance hub.

A great video:

I've been reading more than ever and the links can give some idea of that. Thanks a lot 2025. You were a great year. Let's go for more. Wrote this from a cozy SF winter rain at home.

• Major power blackout in San Francisco shut down a lot of Waymos on the street. Musk said his cars weren’t affected, but those still have safety drivers so it’s not really comparable.

• El Salvador is investing in education with AI. Platzi partnered with them to offer free access to all citizens. And Grok from X is giving students access to AI tutoring in public schools. If you’re from El Salvador, go here to apply for a free year.

• Karpathy’s LLM year in review for 2025. I like his point about summoning ghosts and the merit he gives to Cursor, Claude Code, and Nano Banana. This is important reading.

• New words that we got from 2025. I found this very entertaining because language changes every year and 2025 gave us some very good words that aren’t part of my vocabulary yet, like vibecoding.

• Stanford AI center’s most popular articles of 2025. Mental health and protecting children top the list - shows where the real concerns are. Here’s the deep dive on protecting children in the age of AI and the dangers of AI in mental health care.

• Cursor’s 2025 Wrapped. Everyone’s doing Wrapped now - I got one from Tesla superchargers, Aqua voice, ChatGPT, you name it. But Cursor’s shows the real story of how I was vibing with code this year, building alongside Claude.

• Year in reviews are coming out. Jakob Nielsen and The Pragmatic Engineer both shared their 2025 highlights.

• A review of how crime stats are going down in America this 2025. This will turn political in 2026 during the midterm campaigns. Mark my words.

• More predictions for 2026, this time from Speedrun. AI University anybody? Also, Julia’s collection of quotes for Next Big Thing LatAm 2026.

• Scott Galloway is also doing his predictions for next year. I like how bullish he is on Amazon and Waymo. I hope he’s not right about the AI boom, OpenAI, and Nvidia though. Might be a bubble, but it will be harsh if this falls apart.

• The cybersecurity crisis that AI will generate will be an important discussion in 2026. I’ve seen how these tools are developing better exploits, and this will definitely find cracks in current enterprises. I believe there’s good investment in tools to defend, but we might not be even, at least for next year.

• China is living in the future with drones, fast trains, flying cabs, self-driving taxis, and battery swapping for EVs. And look at this hotel in Guilin. The video shows a futuristic hotel with Avatar-like views among the karst mountains. (Most likely the Shangri-La Guilin or Alila Yangshuo based on the architecture and location.)

• AI bathroom monitors in American high schools. Schools are spending a lot on this surveillance tech, but where’s the research showing it actually works? Do we really need AI in bathrooms?

• Gemini models are impressive, but their infrastructure: Google Cloud, Google AI Studio, etc. is still messy. Here it is described as an exercise of frustration to find a Gemini API key.

• Lovable announced their Series B. Great story, amazing branding, and they keep doing great work.

• NYTimes exposing sexual abuse problems at Uber due to inadequate background check policies in many US states. If it’s this bad in the US, I imagine it’s even worse in other countries.

Next week, I was gonna call the last newsletter of the year Week 67, just to follow the meme. But I’m not even gonna make it. This is over already. The new generation moves at that fast pace.

Writing this update from South Lake Tahoe. Not that much snow for skiing in the main resorts yet, but that’s my plan for Christmas. 🎅

The main idea this week: let’s review a bit of what’s happening with vibecoding. I’ve been reading through posts I’ve shared since December of last year, and I realized that understanding the models was my priority at the beginning of the year. I was fascinated about whether we were going to commit to Chatgpt, Claude, Gemini, or another platform. They all did their best to improve, but what really changed was how I made coding not only a thing to build new products, but the way I use my computer. Now I have servers providing information and doing stuff for me. My whole relationship with technology changed because of AI. It’s fascinating that a lot of people still don’t see this change coming, and it’s definitely redesigning how they work and how technology is getting into their offices and projects.

Links that caught my attention:

• Me sentí en México esta semana gracias a Instagram y esta crónica de Bea sobre el concierto masivo de Bad Bunny. Es increíble cómo las redes sociales te conectan con momentos culturales enormes incluso cuando estás a miles de kilómetros.

• Coursera merging with Udemy. Consolidation with AI as a challenge to big EdTechs.

• San Francisco rapper commenting on the new mayor spending on drones for city security. Very SF - solving public safety with surveillance tech.

• Went to the Gemini Tree event after their off-site and saw some really cool implementations of their MCP server for Google Maps. Really cool practical applications.

• American Airlines debuting the A321XLR on the NYC-LAX route with Flagship Suites. Big deal for premium transcontinental routes.

• Telo, a small electric truck designed in the Bay Area by Yves Behar. Innovation in EVs from San Francisco.

• Netflix is investing in retail - Dallas, Philadelphia, and soon Vegas. I could use some Netflix in the mall. They’re doing a Disney plan without the theme parks. Video of Netflix House Dallas.

• We are going to start having a lot of predictions for 2026. This is the one from A16z. I might add others the following two weeks.

• Dyson and its rotating farm. I really want to try these strawberries.

• Good post about transformer architecture and how Waymo and Tesla are using this for their systems.

• Very long post and very worth it, about Retention. If you work in growth or care about it in your startup, read this.

• Chris Messina and a long post about his evolution as a user and observer of ChatGPT.

• Amazon wants to invest serious money in OpenAI. Remember that they already have an important stake in Anthropic.

• The DeepMind CEO is worried about a correction in the AI market.

Written this week from Home in SF. Claude helped me organize the links. It’s more like a weekly conversation that ends up in this post. Hope you like it.

What I was reading this week

• Repebble recovered the Pebble patents and is delivering the latest watch. Now they’re building a ring you’ll never have to charge. The Pebble dream lives on.

• KiloCode, competing in the AI coding space raised $8m, and it’s backed by the cofounder of Gitlab. I use this tool regularly and I’m a happy investor. The vibecoding wars are heating up and this is exactly the kind of founder backing that moves markets.

• OpenAI released GPT-5.2 family of models. The model wars continue. KiloCode now supports GPT-5.2 with a discount.

• Claude’s Instant Compact feature is really good. I want this as a service for some apps. Quick summaries without losing context.

• New laws that will increase censorship and seem like a gift for Big Tech. Particularly the age verification requirements. EFF has good resources on why this is problematic. Worth watching how this plays out.

• The new Airbus A321XLR will bring very interesting new routes in the future. Aer Lingus already added an 8-hour route to the US. More direct flights to secondary cities.

• Warner Bros and HBO are in play. Paramount is bidding higher. Netflix is the second player. The government will get involved, Trump, his son is involved. This is going to make for a better show than Succession itself. Watch this space.

• Boom Supersonic isn’t just building fast planes anymore. They’re now powering AI data centers with natural gas turbines, plus $300M in new funding. The fast planes is something I expect to enjoy in my lifetime. Also an area where I have invested. Infrastructure plays are where the real returns hide.

• Ecosystem is becoming the next big growth lever. Tech people want to be more outgoing and social now. Balaji calls it the shift back to in-person. After years of remote everything, people are craving real connections again.

• McDonald’s tried an AI-generated commercial and it flopped. Still not there yet for mass market advertising. The uncanny valley is real.

• Reddit is finally testing verification badges. I always felt like some anonymous account on reddit shares the best advice. Will see how verified profiles change that dynamic. At least for AMAs it makes sense. Anybody can do a picture validating with a banana for scale.

• Instagram is letting you pick what shows up in Reels. Finally. Hope it actually works and we can curate our own algorithm instead of just being fed whatever keeps us scrolling.

• This breakdown of why data centers in space make sense is one of the favorite conversations in San Francisco right now. Great first principles thinking.

• The Chronicle just dropped their best new restaurants of 2025. Worth checking out if you’re visiting. Also, Shoji is a bar that turns into a coffee shop with reservations in the morning. Only in San Francisco.

Cool links that I collected this week:

• Netflix is acquiring Warner Brothers - The wildest twist in competition. Netflix is securing to buy Warner Brothers, who owns HBO Max. They’ve been having a struggle since the separation of Discovery, and I was actually following this because there was going to be a big transaction. But I never thought that Netflix was going to take their shot, and I’m really proud of them. One less membership to pay, but also less competition in the industry.

• Essential reading on AI models - If you are going to use LLMs for coding or for anything, make sure to read this post. It’s a very clarifying one about how to think about AI models.

• Google and Anthropic’s approach to LLMs - Which is making progress at Gemini look like a great problem for them. I kind of feel like competition is good and we should never have someone winning the whole market. So this is actually pretty good.

• ChatGPT turns 3 - Btw, we just had a 3-year milestone of ChatGPT. Daniel Avilas reminded us in his LinkedIn. Using LLMs daily has definitely changed my life - thanks to this team for their incredible work.

• Waymo expansion - Waymo’s expanding across California with lots of reports showing their success in detecting and preventing accidents. Good for them.

• El Volcán de Fuego y sus fotos - No hay mucha regulación o un “park ranger” (los gringos esperan infraestructura y regulación en esta región), pero igual el Volcán es viral y de los principales destinos turísticos hoy en día. Gracias Instagram!

  A Time of Gifts

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• The Bay Area also has great views - Worth exploring locally too.

• ElevenLabs is an amazing company. In Poland they are very proud of them.

• From Chile, the team from Runway is always bringing great news. Their new model is amazing. Good work!

• Stack Overflow AI Assist - They took forever to launch something, but here it is - Stack Overflow’s AI tool for developers. Better late than never!

• Jeremiah reminds me of how to organize your Gmail better. Also important to mention the new Workspace Studio in Google Apps. Really good progress from Google.

• Amazon announced new AI agents and introduced Nova 2 at their AWS event. I wonder why nobody seems to care about Nova - it’s a solid model that deserves more attention.

• Harvey hits $8B valuation - Harvey gets good funding. Legal tools have been a fascinating market to follow with the AI boom.

• Gemini en la F1 de Las Vegas - Gemini en The Sphere durante la F1 de Las Vegas. Tienen toda la plata del mundo para hacer publicidad. Y lo hacen con estilo.

• Hope you are all ready for the holidays. And also, by the end of the week, we will know who is playing against who in the FIFA World Cup. Since it will happen in the US, I am planning on attending some matches. Exciting!

Este video de Ian con 16 años bailando. Wow.

Por su parte, Google es otro campeón de la semana. A pesar que era el turno de Microsoft con su evento de Ignite y que presentaron algunas cosas, la noticia se llama Gemini 3. El nuevo modelo disponible hizo que pasara tiempo en el AI Studio, particularmente con el nuevo modelo de Nano Banana con el que ando rediseñando y animando frontends de varios proyectos. Que bonito es programar o vibecodear en el 2025.

Esta semana tengo muchos enlaces para compartir.

Intentaré explicar mas claramente porque cada enlace o lectura es importante, me cuentan si les gusta mas asi.

• Empiezo a tener olfato para cuando el contenido se genero con AI, particularmente en texto. En Inglés te delata el abuso de los “em dashes”, esos guiones largos — que muy pocas personas que conozco realmente usaban. OpenAI los esta eliminando masivamente.

• Tambien de OpenAI, estan testeando Group Chats. Que bonito. Te dormiste Meta, de verdad quiero dejar de usar tanto whatsapp. Si andan en Japón o Corea del Sur me cuentan que tal.

• En Bay Area, Robotaxi de Tesla tiene expansion a todos lados. Waymo finalmente se pone al día en todo Bay Area y pronto llegaran al aeropuerto de SFO. Mi transporte esta siendo hoy subsidiado por los bajos precios de Robotaxi. Como en los viejos tiempos de UberX o el Uber Shared.

• Siguiendo con Gemini 3. Vean que Andor Labs actualizó su reporte con las AI vending machines y gana de lejos a todos los demás modelos.

• Llego un IDE para Gemini3. Es con review de Simon W y crítica por fork de Windsurf del team de KiloCode. Lo quiero probar, pero de momento desde Cursor estuve usando ya el modelo 3 de Gemini.

• Google esta testeando un AI compute privado. Quiero.

• Uno de esos posts que vale la pena revisitar: No te llames programador / developer y otros tipos de career advice. Hoy tengo un par de posts viejitos:

• Prometheus by Jeff Bezos. No es un perfume, es una empresa de AI.

• Lo he dicho de Latinoamérica pero olvide que el mundo es mas grande: Whatsapp es el sistema operativo de India

• SEMrush adquirido por Adobe. Es increíble como esta empresa compra SAAS que funcionan pero su acción sigue siendo medio desastroza este año.

• Una alternativa para planear viajes con amigos. Viajar a un destino y vivir en comunidad, cada quien en su propio Airbnb. El post es de hace un año pero llegué a él y me encantó la idea.

• Escribí un post sobre la gran actividad en el mundo de los Robots con AI. Si les interesa el tema, avisen. Quiero entender mejor de los diferents jugadores. Javier tiene un substack de esto donde comenta de la avalancha de robots humanoides.

Arranco contando brevemente la historia de Enred en Guatemala hace 19 años. Hoy invierto en varios jovenes que tienen esa edad y están haciendo YC luego de hacer dropout de la Universidad. Uff, este comentario viene con canas. Mucha gente que me lee hoy no sabe esta historia.

Imaginen un busito (o busesito 🇨🇴 ). Adentro del bus habían computadoras, algún tipo de conexión a Internet cuando ni nos imaginábamos que tendríamos Starlink. En esas computadoras intentamos que algunos estudiantes tuvieran acceso a Internet y empezaran a crear contenido. Era un grupo de coworkers de un medio de comunicación local donde yo era el webmaster, pero también un grupo de Chapines increíbles los que acompañamos ese bus. Se atoró en lodo, visitó iglesias (le echaron agua bendita para que tuviera buen viaje), nos llevo a lugares icónicos del país. Ese bus me dio la oportunidad de ser un profesor que le hablaba a jovenes sobre Internet y sus posibilidades.

La idea del bus fue inspirada en un bus que tenia la W3C recorriendo Estados Unidos para enseñar de Estandares HTML. Con un presupuesto mas acomodado que los gringos, se hizo el bus para inspirar y acompañaban los viajes varias personas que dimos charlas introductorias y técnicas. Así fue como aprendí a dar conferencias y a seguir vía email y redes en contacto con personas. Así nació una comunidad.

La segunda historia es un poco la Serendipity que generó este bonito artículo y la portada de Forbes Centro America de Noviembre/ Diciembre. El PDF completo disponible. Yes. PDF porque esto va a salir en puestos de revistas.

Me levanté hace unas semanas queriendo ser un poco rebelde con el Tech Week de SF porque sabía que iba a venir mucha gente de visita, todos iban a estar cansados de hablar de tecnología y quería invitarlos a un bar, sin agenda, sin hablar de AI, sin hablar inglés, tomar vino, cerveza y de paso conocer un buen bar mexicano o español local. Gano el de Spain, ganó el Chato en Mission y llego mucha gente. Gracias a la gente linda de ese bar que no se enojan que lleve tanta gente de golpe. Gracias por sus tapas y sus buenos vinos.

Un amigo de Brasil llegó a contarme de su negocio, a buscar clientes y me presentó a una nueva amiga, Yandira, venezolana en Panamá, quien luego me invitó a ser entrevistado para Forbes. Un deadline nos cayó encima, tuve que buscar un fotógrafo local, convencerlo de que me entregara fotos RAW al día siguiente, ir a una de mis calles favoritas al lado de Union Square en un día foggy y lluvioso. Con la excusa al fotógrafo que haríamos unas fotos para una revista que habla de emprendimiento allá en Centroamérica, todo esto pasó. La portada y la revista salió esta semana. Si están en Panamá les encargo una copia impresa que estos días empieza a circular. Se que con Yandira vamos a colaborar mucho más en el 2026.

Les juro que estas dos historias conectan.

Salió la portada, me llenó de emoción y hablaron de mi trabajo. La publiqué en redes. Entre los primeros comentarios, reconecté con estudiantes de EnRed y gente que me conocía de esa época. Vez los linkedin de estos campeones y su carrera, notas como hemos crecido una generación completa haciendo tecnología en la region.

Enred tuvo Angeles que lucharon fuerte porque esto sucediera. Maestros del Web tuvo Angeles que colaboraron, escribieron y moderaron muchos mensajes. Platzi tiene sus Angel Investors que nos acompañan desde las épocas de YC.

Hace poco en el Foro de Capital Privado en Uruguay, mencionaba que mas personas deberían intentar ser Angel Investors, porque al final son como Angeles de la Guardia (muchas referencias católicas en este post, I know. Así fui criado) que ayudan a nuevas generaciones a crear. Yo siempre parto de crear tecnología, de crear empresas, de mover al mundo hacia adelante. Pero toca hacer las cosas en equipo, para que diferentes generaciones se conecten y salgamos adelante.

Esta semana saludé a mucha gente, mande mas voice notes de los que me debería permitir Whatsapp e Instagram. Estoy terminando de escribir este post con mucha humildad porque eso fueron 20 años. Las próximas dos décadas para mi, empezaron en el 2022 o 2023 con unos GPTs que han sido la locura.

El mundo cambió.

Hoy hay que crear para ese nuevo mundo. Las herramientas están allí, debemos no dejar ser distraídos por tanto reel y tiktok. Hoy hay muchos mas jovenes inquietos con mas acceso, mejor conectividad, y mucho poder de computo en el bolsillo. Hoy le dices a un agente que te haga una app y chan, la tienes disponible.

Estoy muy feliz esta semana.

Tres o cuatro links (tal vez agrego mas luego):

• Cursor anuncia su serie D. Que barbaros.

• La vida con el team de Cursor. Linda cultura de empresa

• Cursor esta facturando 1 Billion dollars anuales.

• Words that make AI not sound human. Me hice un prompt para rankear que tan posible es que usaran AI para una nota con esto. Si quieren que lo comparte avisen y lo dejo en el whatsapp de Vibecoding.

• Meta is making money thanks to scammer ads. Nobody cares.

• Apple tiene mucha plata. El nuevo Branding de Apple TV es delicioso.

Por cierto. Les gusto Silicon Salsa con Enzo? Hay episodio nuevo este fin de semana. Se que lo han pedido. También hay Gato Volador mañana. Los que saben, saben.

I want to be able to say:

“Get me a flight like the one I took to that NY conference last year. Same vibe, same timing. But this time, show me three options: cash price, points price, and maybe a hybrid if the points redemption isn’t quite worth it.”

Is that too much to ask in 2025?

The full post: Travel Planning AI in Cvander.com. Presenten gente en la industria que conozcan.

Hola amigos. Gracias por la compañía en las News de esta semana:

• Foodies Alert! La gente trendy sigue los consejos de Infatuation para elegir donde comer en San Francisco. Aquí su lista de donde comer recientemente. También sus mejores 25 restaurantes.

• Para instalar python y manejarlo mejor, prueben uv. Luis escribe de Modern Python Dependencies.

• Dating in the era of ChatGPT. A sus amigos solteros, recomienden el libro de How not to Die Alone. Es maravilloso.

• La economía del mundo se mueve en Excel. Las grandes empresas tienen una Brenda. Qué pasa con Copilot en Excel? Un buen argumento contra AI en Excel.

• He escuchado mucho de lo caro que se volvió la nube. Algunos números particulares.

• Gran landing: Wabi. Eugenia y su equipo levantan 20mm de a16z.

• Drop duro del Stock de Duolingo. No fue el único pero sí uno de los más afectados. Yo quiero apostar por el paisano, así que aprovecho a guardar un poquito extra.

• Amazon va contra Perplexity y el uso de Comet para automatizar compras. Double standards en acción.

• En Japón, se cansaron de que usen Anime para entrenar modelos de Sora.

• Descubrí que en París tenían una acera/sidewalk que se movía, como las que hoy ven en los aeropuertos en 1900.

• Comparto para quienes aun no lo ven, la joya que lanzo Rosalia.

Esta semana, parece que la economía de Estados Unidos va de lo más maravilloso. Right?

• Nvidia vale 5 trillion dollars (lo escribo en inglés porque ese número en español tendría demasiados ceros).

  • Le fue super bien a Google, a Amazon, a Twilio y a otro montón de empresas en sus resultados de tercer trimestre.

• Kyla en el NYT habla del Casino de la Economía de Trump (gift link) Gran descripción.

• EXIT EN LATAM 🇭🇳 Felicitaciones a los amigos de R2. ¡Talento centroamericano!

• ChatGPT está ocupándose del tema de Mental Health y la app: Achieved 65-80% reduction in problematic responses

• Cursor presenta su propio modelo Composer. Y llega Cursor 2.

  • Dato curioso, hicieron esto mientras sucedía Github Universe conference y Microsoft hablaba de más Copilots en su software. 365 Copilot también para software.

• JOBS ALERT: Si estás trabajando en algún Agente AI que te hizo la vida más fácil y quisieras que este proyecto siga creciendo, podría proveer tiempo y capital para ayudarte. Me sirve si me contactas vía LinkedIn respondiendo a este mensaje si te interesa.

• Ya estoy en el Waitlist de Claude Code para Excel. Poder pedirle a Claude que te presente todo en formato de Excel lately ha sido muy hermoso.

(Si quieres imaginar cómo va a ser, Gemini ya está funcionando conectado a Google Sheets. Y está increíble para arrancar un nuevo sheet.)

• Opinionated guide to using AI today. Para leer completo.

• 🇨🇱En Chile, conocí a este equipo que está dando $3,000 a 10 personas (equity free) para motivarlos a emprender.

• Alucinaciones. Anibal nos recuerda que es el feature de los LLMs.

• Paper: Revisitando la definición de AGI.

• También artículo en Reventlov sobre el 57% avanzado en AGI.

• Neo quiere poner un robot de $20 mil dólares en nuestros hogares. Are we ready for this? (Todavía necesita mucho entrenamiento) Vean el Video

• [Video] Este lugar en SF me parece muy interesante para describir lo que está pasando en la ciudad. Miren esta pelea de robots en un sótano los fines de semana

• [Video] Va a mejorar Union Square en San Francisco . Hoy no recomiendo a la gente que se quede por ese barrio, hay lugares mejores en la ciudad, pero que bueno que esta cambiando.

• ChatGPT Atlas es la noticia de la semana. Review de Platformer. Hace 994 días empecé a usar ChatGPT.

• Escribí de ChatGPT atlas y que pasaría si el futuro es un agente independiente.

Reflección random: Microsoft podría traer de vuelta el logo de Internet Explorer y crear AI Explorer.

• Brave hablando de prompt injections en navegadores con AI.

• Vibe Engineering de Simon Willison.

• Anthropic presentó Claude Code Web.

• [Youtube] Gary Tan de YC nos recuerda cómo AI puede aumentar toda la demanda de muchos mercados, no acabar con los trabajos

• Gagan por su parte habla de cómo seria el mundo con Ingenieros operando en todos los roles. [Post en Linkedin]

• Jeremiah de Llama Lounge. Human to AI Talent shift. [Post en Linkedin]

• Soy fan de estos posts donde un Developer se lo toma personal: Contra el DRM de Amazon.

• TimeOut magazine presentó los 39 nuevos barrios cool del mundo. Qué lindo el barrio que pusieron en SF. De mis favoritos.

• [Youtube] Gran video sobre Panamá y sus traumas con USA. De Johnny Harris.

• Ranki: Qué hacer para llegar a los 100 resultados de Google. Bien Alejandro! [Nuevo Substack]

• María nos cuenta Por qué escribir. [Nuevo Substack]

• El Show de Altman. Transcribieron su gira de Podcasts y te dan el summary.

• Qué le pasó a los Subtítulos de Crunchyroll?

• Free poster de San Francisco. De mis favoritas fotógrafas en la ciudad.

Estoy mejorando la rutina de escribir este boletín.

Shared links que emocionaron mi corazoncito:

• ChatGPTío. Comedy sketch. Todo SNL estuvo buenísimo con Bad Bunny de host. Incluyendo un clip de El Chavo del Ocho.

• La semana empezó con OpenAI DeveloperDay mostrando el AgentKit, su nueva integración con Apps. Hay muchos nuevos features en Codex. Pero además, Sora 2 ahora es parte de los APIs de la empresa.

• Me gusta mucho el proyecto de las AI vending machines. Escribí de esto para Reventlov.

• Un Bitcoin llega a valer $125K. #cryptocositas

• El Internet Archive tiene mil millones de páginas web en el archivo. A trillion pages. Es uno de mis lugares recomendados para visitar en SF si hay algún evento.

• Sora 2 se volvió la app más importante en el Apple Store la semana pasada. Busquen a @cvandercito y porfa, cameos que me hagan ver bien.

• Update de Sam Altman sobre cómo van a cambiar el uso de copyright stuff en Sora. Japón gana en creatividad.

• La renta en SF llegó de vuelta a los precios pre-pandemia. The city is so back.

• Ahora Arduino es de Qualcomm.

• Discutido en el grupo de Vibecoding: The AI coding trap.

• Gran post long-form hablando de la vida de Tim Berners-Lee. En el New Yorker.

  

• Una persona que resuelve casi todo con Google Sheets. Me siento representado.

• Sports Betting. No está contento el pueblo gringo con lo fácil que se volvió ese negocio.

• Mapa de los dueños de los VPNs. Negocio de billones. Pero con muchas conexiones corporativas extrañas.

En San Francisco: After de AI en el Tech Week (no quiero hablar de tech). Sold out. Hay sol esta tarde y alguien seguramente me hablará de un proyecto que no sea un wrapper de ChatGPT. Crucen los dedos por mí 🤞

• Llegó Sora 2. Es una red social y me ha enganchado bastante.

• Llegó Sonnet 4.5 el inicio de la semana. En los grupos de vibecoding todos estan felices.

• Vercel is huge, valuacion de mas de 9 billion dejando los temas politicos de lado.

• Gemini ahora con version para el hogar. Reemplazando a Google Home

• Nadella quiere pasar mas tiempo con los Ingenieros de Microsoft. Nuevo CEO de Business para Microsoft.

• Gran forma de dar contexto en el debate entre Devs de escuela vieja vs vibecoders. Lean con calma. No es largo. Explica como se lee un tutorial de código cuando no hay bases desde alguien que no es developer.

• Hay muchas guías de restaurantes gringas y esta es la madre de todas, me la apunto. 20 lugares que han definido al país. Tengo ya un par visitados y fueron memorables todos.

• Otro que como yo piensa que le falta alma a los AI que están narrando muchos audiolibros.

• Si estancia usando Notebook, algunos tips de Google.

• Las Universidades son cruciales para aprender AI. Lo publica Stanford.

• Kilocode explicando que modelos deberíamos usar. Gran proyecto, sigo recomendando.

• Google con el Agents Payment Protocol. Stripe también tiene algo con partnership con OpenAI.

• [Video] Michael y Dalton volvieron para hablar de que tan impaciente tienes que ser camino a AGI

• [Video] Rose y Howard Stern. Escuchar la primera version de APT fue un gran detalle.

Varios servicios nuevos que estuve probando

Voy a ir comentando esto mas frecuentemente:

• Ranki de Alejandro Gonzalez. Para los SEO masters.

• Rebolt. De Celia y Javier. Imaginen un Lovable para tus apps internas.

• Design Arena para ver como compiten modelos de genAI para hacer cosas.

• Gaus. Investment Analyst para usar LLMs con tu portafolio de inversiones.

• Better Auth. Para una app con next.js

Otras cosas que llamaron mi atención esta semana:

• Anthropic llega a su serie F. Que valuaciones tan locas. $183 billion.

• Entrevista al founder de AirTable y como la empresa está usando AI (en el boletín de Lenny)

• 40% del código en Coinbase es generado por AI (comentario de Brian, el CEO)

• Revisen la seguridad de Meta en su teléfono y que tanto acceso tiene a sus imágenes.

• En Corea del Sur, muñecos simulando ser nietos ayudan a mantener acompañados a adultos mayores.

• Importante milestone para Bytedance: La empresa detrás de TikTok esta vendiendo mas que meta.

Post PlatziConf

• La pregunta que más recibí por DMs (sí, contesto) fue sobre el documento que mencioné en el Firesidechat sobre Cómo definir CoFounders para una Startup. Les dejo dos tools. (en cvander.com)

• FiresideChat con Freddy: Cómo construir una potencia desde Latinoamérica en Tecnología? (en mi YouTube, sigan porfa)

• PlatziConf cumplió 10 años con este lindo video.

• Muchas gracias Platzi (en mi blog)

• Jose Caparroso cuenta mi despedida del rol de COO de Platzi en Forbes. (También en Linkedin)

• Pendiente el video de VibeCoding. Llega pronto, primero en la app.

Tenemos un grupo de Whatsapp para hablar de Vibecoding.

Ejemplos muy locos de Nano Banana de Google Gemini:

• Generando imágenes con Sketches

• Outfit para una foto. Esto va a cambiar la forma como compramos ropa.

• Usen un green screen entre cambios de fondo.

• Posicionando personas con instrucciones en dos fotos.

• Middle Earth con Nano Banana (combinación con video, mucho potencial en este uso para creativos)

Este FiresideChat es un resumen de la charla que tuvimos en PlatziConf este pasado fin de semana.

(Test de video distribution en Substack. Los links de la semana vienen pronto)