July 3, 2025

The Download: AI agents hype, and Google’s electricity plans

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Don’t let hype about AI agents get ahead of reality —Yoav Shoham is a professor emeritus at Stanford University and cofounder of AI21 Labs. At Google’s I/O 2025 event in May, the company…

Writer CEO May Habib to take the AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

July 3, 2025
AI agents are reshaping how work gets done across industries, and at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, one of the leading voices in that transformation is stepping onto the AI Stage. May Habib, CEO and co-founder of Writer, will join us in San Francisco, October 27-29, for a fireside chat that dives deep into how enterprises are […]

Google’s electricity demand is skyrocketing

July 3, 2025
We got two big pieces of energy news from Google this week. The company announced that it’s signed an agreement to purchase electricity from a fusion company’s forthcoming first power plant. Google also released its latest environmental report, which shows that its energy use from data centers has doubled since 2020. Taken together, these two…

Don’t let hype about AI agents get ahead of reality

July 3, 2025
Google’s recent unveiling of what it calls a “new class of agentic experiences” feels like a turning point. At its I/O 2025 event in May, for example, the company showed off a digital assistant that didn’t just answer questions; it helped work on a bicycle repair by finding a matching user manual, locating a YouTube…

AI job predictions become corporate America’s newest competitive sport

July 3, 2025
In late May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei appeared to kick open the door on a sensitive topic, warning that half of entry-level jobs could vanish within five years because of AI and push U.S. unemployment up to 20%. But Amodei is far from alone in sharing aloud that he foresees a workforce bloodbath. A new […]

OpenAI condemns Robinhood’s ‘OpenAI tokens’

July 2, 2025
OpenAI wants to make clear that Robinhood’s sale of “OpenAI tokens” will not give everyday consumers equity — or stock — in OpenAI, the company said in a post on X from its official newsroom account. OpenAI says it does not endorse Robinhood’s effort, nor was it involved in facilitating the token sale. “These ‘OpenAI […]