ChatGPT is like Netflix. It enjoyed an early mover advantage that gave it a natural market-share lead for a considerable period. But now, new blood is drawn to the market that it validated, and the room is suddenly a lot more crowded. And this phenomenon can be seen in AI’s shifting market shares.
As agentic AI permeates our digital domains and desktops, it could require a shift in the way that we interact with software. Connectors between AI engines like Claude Cowork and the various platforms that they unify and automate could mean that logging in as a SaaS subscriber is a thing of the past.
After two years of delayed action and lots of flak from the tech press, Apple recently made good on its AI promises. As we examined in our WWDC coverage last month, the company has finally rolled out the new AI-infused Siri, as well as an Apple Intelligence layer that stretches across its devices and apps.
AI’s biggest barrier today isn’t necessarily technical. The technology is still plagued by consumer trust issues. This stems from several objections, including the AI’s reliability and its association with job losses, not to mention all the dystopian fears. A new report from WordPress.com quantifies the issue.
Online publishers have an AI problem. Everyone from the New York Times to your favorite mommy blog is losing traffic as AI engines’ conversational answers intercept their clicks. It’s zero-click search on steroids, and it’s the latest gripe across the interweb. But a solution is starting to emerge: video.
Exactly two years after its splashy unveiling of Apple Intelligence, and lots of handwringing since then, Apple has made good on its AI promise. At this week’s WWDC keynote, Apple painted a more tangible picture of AI’s integration across its ubiquitous products, including Apple Intelligence and the new Siri.
Advertising is a logical monetization path for AI search. Like traditional search, user intent is spelled out… but even more so, given nuanced natural-language queries. This is the idea behind OpenAI’s new ad program. And though it’s experiencing early growing pains, it’s quickly muscling past them.
SMB marketing software leader vcita has announced the launch of an AI-powered lead conversion tool. Known as AI Leads Max, it sits under vcita’s flagship inTandem platform and automates the cultivation of inbound leads. This is an opportune area of SMB SaaS that AI continues to transform.
Google I/O is underway and it’s a parade of new products and features. And as you can imagine, everything has an AI label on it and is infused with Gemini, Nano-Banana, and other Google AI variants.
AI has taken up a lot of the bandwidth in SMB marketing. But almost paradoxically, the swift adoption of AI on both the marketing and
Yelp’s Q1 earnings showed flat revenue growth and other marginal gains, but it beat estimates given a challenged SMB macroeconomic environment. Its earnings also tell a compelling story about non-advertising revenues and – like several others we’ve been watching – revenue diversification.
Doordash has announced a new suite of tools designed to onboard SMBs to its platform in streamlined and automated ways. Highlighting things like pre-populating their business details, menus, and other relevant info, the endgame is to attract more SMBs to the platform by lowering friction.
The holy grail of SMB SaaS is to be an all-in-one (AIO) provider. Spanning several SMB functions – from marketing to operations – AIO providers can gain ARPU and lower churn. The latter happens as they’re embedded deep into critical operations such as payroll and point-of-sale payments.
Yelp this week announced its Spring product release. This comes every year with a treasure trove of updates across Yelp’s products and functions. This year’s theme is unsurprisingly AI – including user-facing features to find local businesses, and SMB-facing features for automated task completion.
Amidst all the AI excitement, one reality check we continue to raise is how the technology is held back by trust issues. Yes, AI is effective and impressive… but that doesn’t mean much if users don’t trust it en masse. These AI trust issues were quantified this week by a new study from Yelp.
Back in January, Yelp acquired Hatch for $300 million. One thing that jumped out was the pre-money valuation and purchase price. Given Hatch’s $25 million ARR, the purchase price reflected a 12x ARR multiple. This begged the question: Are Covid-era software multiples back? The answer is yes and no.
Google Maps just got smarter. The company announced that Maps will get a new Gemini-powered ‘Ask Maps’ feature that makes the UX more conversational. This is just the latest in a sequence of updates that bring more AI to Google Maps, and the latest development in the ongoing mapping wars.
Vcita is out this week with a new report that validates and further quantifies what we’ve largely observed and suspected: SMBs want automation. Known as the 2026 Small Business Adoption Report, it points to heightened demand levels for anything that can help SMBs automate marketing and operations.
New research from Scorpion reveals a widening AI adoption gap between consumers and small businesses—raising urgent questions about local discovery, visibility, and marketing readiness.
The last two years of AI’s rise have been scored by a chorus of punditry that goes something like: “AI is here, and it changes everything.” It’s a familiar tune in hype cycles that eventually morphs into “XYZ will change some things.” So jumping ahead, it’s a question of where AI works… and where it doesn’t.
