Tech Brew Ride Home - Gemini’s Suddenly The #1 App In All The Land

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Nano Banana is such a hit that Gemini is suddenly ahead of ChatGPT, at least if we’re measuring by the app store. Lots of interesting new data about how people are actually using AI. A new accelerator program from OpenAI itself, and is the AI boom like the dawn of the microprocessor or more like the dawn of containerization? Google Gemini is the top free iPhone app (9to5Google) Here’s what the data says people ask ChatGPT (Washington Post) Anthropic Finds Businesses Are Mainly Using AI to Automate Work (Bloomberg) China Targets Nvidia Over 2020 Deal, Straining Trade Talks (Bloomberg) PayPal Links lets you send and receive money much faster now - even crypto (ZDNet) OpenAI announces new mentorship program for budding tech founders (CNBC) AI Will Not Make You Rich (Colossus) Listener Survey: https://www.morningbrewbreakroom.com/c/r/Tech-Brew-Ride-Home Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Google Fi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Monday, September 15th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Nanobanana is such a hit that Gemini is suddenly ahead of chat GPT, at least if we're measuring by the App Store. Lots of interesting new data about how people are actually using AI, a new accelerator program from OpenAI itself, and is the AI boom like the dawn of the microprocessor or more like the dawn of containerization? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Do you know what the number one first? free app is in the app store right now. It's Google's Gemini app. Gemini is not only now beating

chat GPT, it is beating everything. Apparently a ton of you are using the heck out of that nano-banana image model, which has been used more than 500 million times, apparently, to make images. Look out, Adobe, but as Chad Hurley tweeted, Incredible, growth without goonware or rage-baiting. Who knew? Mind-blown emoji. And as Kimman Isthmus tweeted, Nano Banana has done Google a huge favor. It is a tool suitable for mass use that is fun to use, and that contributes greatly to the spread of Gemini.

Google has done itself a huge favor with this. Quoting 9 to 5, Google. From the launch on August 26th to September 9th, the Gemini app saw 23 million new users. Nano Banana has been used to edit over 500 million images in that period. This image editing model is a viral hit due to how it maintains character likeness and consistency. You can upload multiple photos to make new ones, transfer styles, and of course conversational editing. All free users can generate or edit up to 100 images per day, while that goes

to a thousand if you're a subscriber at 1999 plus per month, end quote. And quoting Tom's guide. The feature has gone viral on social platforms because it's accessible. You don't need expert prompting to get good results. It's visual and fun, turning a selfie or sketch into a figurine is instantly shareable. It's also fast. The model runs quickly enough that edits feel playful, not tedious. It's a reminder that one well-designed feature can completely change the trajectory of an app, end quote. Actually, we've got a whole bunch of data all the sudden about how y'all are using these AI tools, because some of these AI companies are telling us how for the first time. For instance, OpenAI has released the first detailed public study on how people use

chat GPT, and according to them, 73% of chats were non-work-related, practical guidance was the top use case, and more. Quoting the Washington Post. The company reports that most chat GPT users are women and that the majority of requests sent its way are not work-related. The user base is dominated by young people. Nearly half of the conversations studied were from people aged 18 to 25. Opening eye releases the data on Monday in a 62-page research paper, which has not been peer-reviewed. It is based on chat logs from 1.5 million of chat GPT's users between May 24 and June of 2025. When chat GPT was first gaining traction in late 2022 and early 2023, around 80% of users had, quote, typically masculine first names, the company's study found.

By June 2025, that had flipped. 52% of chat GPT users have feminine names, open AI researchers wrote. ChatGPT usage is growing faster in poorer countries than it is in wealthy ones, the study said, although it did not list usage by country. Opening Eye has said chat GPT now has more than 700 million weekly users. People are increasingly using chat GPT in their personal lives rather than for help at work, opening eyes study found. In June 2024, prompts to the chatbot were split roughly evenly between work and personal uses. By June of 2025, non-work uses made up 73% of all conversations, the company said. Opening I sorted the more than 1 million chats studied

across that period into seven categories. The biggest was practical guidance at 28.3% of all chats, a category that companies researchers defined as including people seeking how to advice, help with schoolwork, and tips on, say, working out. The second biggest category was people asking ChatGPT for writing help, a use case that builds on the advances in AI text generation that berth the chatbot and others like it. OpenAI study found that the most popular writing task given to chat GBT was editing or critiquing text, followed by personal writing or communication, a category defined to include helping with emails or social media posts. The ability of chat GBT and similar AI tools to generate computer code has been enthusiastically adopted by many

in the tech industry. Open AI's study found that around 4.2% of the sample chats were related to programming. The third most popular use case for chat GBT across the data included in the study was seeking information, a category the researchers said, appears to be a very close substitute for web search, end quote. Yeah, but let's come back to that coding use case because Anthropic has their own report out detailing how Claude usage varies by country and U.S. states, but they found 36% of folks use it for coding. 77% of enterprise use is for automation, and more, quoting Bloomberg. More than three quarters, 77% of companies' usage, of Anthropics' Claude AI software involved automation patterns, often including full-task delegation

delegation, according to a research report the startup released on Monday. The finding was based on an analysis of traffic from Anthropics application programming interface, which is used by developers and businesses. On the whole, Anthropic found businesses primarily use Claude for administrative tasks and coding, the latter of which has been a key focus for the company and much of the AI industry. Anthropic OpenAI and other AI developers have released more sophisticated AI tools that can write and debug code on a user's behalf. Anthropics chief executive officer Dario Ammodai has previously issued particularly dire predictions, claiming AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level jobs and that people should stop sugar-coting what lies ahead, end quote. More from Anthropics report, quote,

education and science usage shares are on the rise, while the use of Claude 4 coding continues to dominate our total sample at 36%. Educational tasks surge from 9.3% to 12.4%. and scientific tasks from 6.3 to 7.2%. Users are entrusting Claude with more autonomy, directive conversations where users delegate complete tasks to Claude jumped from 27% to 39%. We see increased program creation encoding, which was up by 4.5 percentage points,

and a reduction in debugging, which was down by 2.9 percentage points, suggesting that users might be able to achieve more of their goals in a single exchange. While computer and mathematical tasks still dominate overall usage at 36 percent, we are seeing sustained growth in knowledge-intensive fields, end quote. Not sure what sort of tea leaves to read here, but China says Nvidia has been found in violation of antitrust regulations in a preliminary investigation in a brief statement without further

details, quoting Bloomberg. The U.S. chipmaker was found in violation of antitrust regulations after the acquisition of networking gearmaker Melanox Technologies, the state administration. for market regulation said after concluding a preliminary investigation, the surprise announcement emerged with U.S. and Chinese officials heading into a second day of wide-ranging negotiations in Madrid over tariffs, which could shape the relationship between the world's two largest economies. Over the weekend, China also said it was launching an anti-dumping investigation, targeting a type of semiconductor made by U.S. companies, including Texas instruments. The regulator didn't specify on Monday what sort of remedies it would seek from NVIDIA,

adding it will investigate the company further. Nvidia didn't immediately respond to an emailed request for comment outside of regular office hours. On Monday, President Donald Trump said he would speak with China's Xi Jinping on Friday after lower-level negotiations between the two countries. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said the two sides had discussed the poor timing of the Nvidia investigation but had agreed on a framework to keep BightDance's TikTok app running in the U.S. another long-running conflict between Washington and Beijing, end quote. Come together on a Windows 11 PC.

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See you this summer. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals. because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. PayPal has launched PayPal Links, which lets users create a personalized one-time link to send or request payment to other PayPal users.

Quoting ZDNet, move over Zell, watch out Cash App, PayPal has unveiled a new type of peer-to-peer payment method that promises to be easier and simpler than other options. On Monday, the online payment service unveiled PayPal Links, a new way for individuals to send and receive. receive money without incurring fees or tax forums. The new option is now available in the U.S. to start and will expand to the UK, Italy, and other countries later in September. Whether you want to pay someone or request payment, PayPal links lets you generate a personalized one-time

link that you can share via a text, direct message, or email. To do that, just launch the PayPal app for iOS or Android, select the PayPal link option, add the amount you want to pay or request, and then copy the link into your message or other conversation. You can also add a note or even an emoji. After tapping the link, the person on the other end either sends you your requested payment or accepts the money you sent. The receiver then gets immediate access to the funds. Since the transaction runs through the PayPal app, both the payer and payee need a PayPal account.

If a link is shared with someone who doesn't have an account, that person is prompted to create one through the PayPal app or website. To safeguard your security and privacy, each link is private, designed for one-time use, and generated just for a specific transaction. Unclaimed links expire after 10 days. Before the time is up, you can send the other person a reminder or even cancel the payment. With PayPal links, PayPal collects no transaction fee. Payers and payees are also exempt from 1099K reporting, so you won't receive any tax forms for the payment. Finally, PayPal has one more surprise. Cryptocurrency will be included in the links feature. People in the U.S. will soon be able to

quickly send Bitcoin, Ethereum, PiUSD, and other cryptocurrencies, into, to PayPal, Venmo, and other supported digital wallets, end quote. And founders, I'm putting this on your radar. OpenAI has unveiled Grove, a five-week mentorship program for nascent tech entrepreneurs hosted in its San Francisco headquarters with around 15 participants in its first cohort. Quoting CNBC, OpenAI on Friday introduced a new program dubbed the OpenAI Grove for early tech entrepreneurs looking to build with artificial intelligence and applications are already open. Unlike OpenAI's pioneer program, which launched in April, Grove is aimed toward individuals at the very nascent phases of their company development from the pre-idea to precede stage.

For five weeks, participants will receive mentoring from OpenAI technical leaders, early access to new tools and models and in-person workshops located in the company's San Francisco headquarters. Roughly 15 members will join Groves' first cohort, which will run from October 20th to November 2021. Applicants will have until September 24th to submit an entry form. CNBC has reached out to opening eye for comment on the program. Following the program, Grove participants will be able to continue working internally with the chat GPT maker, end quote. Finally today, a really interesting weekend read from Jerry Newman over at Colossus. The gist of his argument is that generative AI is a real technological shift, but the way it will create wealth will likely disappoint most investors chasing the next big thing.

Newman argues that AI today looks less like the microprone, processor, an innovation that spawned thousands of startups and fortunes, and more like containerized shipping, a society-wide transformation whose gains largely flowed to customers and incumbents not to waves of new independent winners. The right investing question isn't how big is AI, it's who actually captures the value. In classic tech cycles, you get phases like early interruption or experimentation, frenzy and speculation, synergy and productization, and maturity, commodization, Investors tend to do well during frenzy and synergy, but in late-wave moments, competition is immediate and intense. Profits get competed away quickly. Newman argues AI fits that late-wave pattern.

It arrived with minimal surprise, sits atop established computing, data, and cloud foundations, and immediately triggered a free-for-all rather than a long, open-ended tinkerer phase. That dynamic caps excess returns for most builders. Follow the money and the picture clarifies. If you didn't get into a frontier model, company early, you probably miss the only part of the stack where outsized gains could accrue. High CapEx, brutal competition, and eventual consolidation mean only a handful of model providers funded and controlled by tech giants are likely to dominate. Domain-specific models, e.g. for legal or coding, may be valuable but will likely be rolled

up. App-layer startups that rely on those models will see their economies squeeze by platform pricing or vertical integration. Success at the app layer can perversely invite capture by the model owners. Expect convergence toward AI companies, few in number, rather than a broad, enduring, independent app ecosystem. Could intermediaries fare better, maybe? Firms that broker between enterprises and model providers or protect proprietary data, think picks and shovels like data governance or interface layers, but the shipping analogy suggests even successful intermediaries top out at mid-size outcomes because dominant platforms won't allow them strategic leverage.

What about moving upstream into chips, data centers, and specialized data? Some value will accrue there, but much of it is already priced in and CAPEX cycles can turn vicious. If AI spending plateaus or dips, suppliers stuck with long lead commitments can be caught with excess capacity. General data is commoditized, only timely, hard to replicate domain-specific data sets hold pricing power, and even that market isn't huge. The downstream story is more promising.

AI is particularly good at extracting high-quality output from ambiguous inputs. That raises productivity in knowledge-intensive sectors, professional services, healthcare, education, finance, and creative work, which together represent a third to half of global GDP. Companies whose strategies already assume lower costs think IKEA's quality at low price, make-it-up-in-volume playbook, are primed to benefit fastest. But simply banking cost savings as margin rather than reinvesting to grow is a losing strategy, over time. Macro-wise, economists estimate AI could lift global GDP by one to seven percent over the next decade, trillions of dollars in output. But most of that value likely accrues to consumers via cheaper, better knowledge services, while human-intensive face-to-face services become relatively more expensive. Investors should therefore fish downstream back businesses that can convert

knowledge, work, or productivity into new demand products and markets. In this era, the edge is not betting on AI itself, but betting on the opportunities AI. unlocks, end quote. As I said, it was a very interesting read. Click through to read the whole thing. Quick note that the show tomorrow will be like an hour or so late. I've got something scheduled in the morning that I need to bang out. But also, important news for all listeners. As you know, we recently joined the Morning Brew family, and as I said, some of that was in aid of hopefully getting a different level of sponsors. So help me do that. We just got started with Morning Brew, so they need to know more about who is listening to the show.

in the eight years of the show. I've never done a listener survey, and so the bottom link in the show notes today is to a survey asking you to tell us about yourself, about your listening habits. Two reasons I hope you'll help me out. Number one, I put some questions in there asking what it is you want to hear more of

and what you want to hear less of. So this is designed to get demo information on the audience, but also for you to help guide how the show evolves editorially. Take the time and tell me what you like and what you don't like. And for your time and your trouble, you'll be entered into a raffle to win a $500 Amex gift card. That's right. One of you will win a $500 gift card if you take the survey.

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