Tech Brew Ride Home - Meta Finally Has An AI Hit

Starting point is 00:00:04 Welcome to the TechBrew Ride Home for Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. Meta's Mew's top download charts and sent meta's stock soaring. Shopify agreed to let Muse complete checkouts via ShopPay, Microsoft laid off Xbox staffers as Halo moves to Activision, and Jammie's Mimo v.2.6 Pro became the top open-weight model. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. I've got good news. IT pros. Ace of Uptime is back with new decks. won't want to miss. This online card game made by Eaton gives you the chance to battle IT villains and become an IT hero. And now, there are three new decks made for Enterprise, Data Center, and lone IT pros. Each one is built for those unique worlds with their own challenges.

Starting point is 00:00:57 Ace of Uptime has all the decision-making you already know, just faster, funnier, and without the ticket backlog. And keep in mind, no game plays out the same way twice. Try the new decks and see how your strategy holds up. Head to Eton.com. Ace to play. That's Eton.com slash ace. Is it surprising to anyone else that seemingly out of nowhere, there's all this heat around Meta's Muse AI model all of the sudden? Meta's stock has apparently jumped 12% because, according to Censor Tower, users are downloading the Muse app like crazy, quoting Bloomberg. Muse is ranked the number one free app on the Apple App Store and Google Play as of Monday.

Starting point is 00:01:42 assistant, which is available for people 18 years and older, was downloaded more than 902,000 times in the six days after Meta introduced it on September 8th, according to Abe Yusuf, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower. That's more than the 773,000 downloads of its predecessor, the meta-AI app in the same post-launch period, he added. Mews is also available within Meta-owned WhatsApp, indicating it may have even more users beyond the number of standalone app downloads. Mews, let's people create customized AI agents, tools that can be sent out to the web to complete digital tasks on a user's behalf. The key difference between Muse and the older meta-AI is Muse's

Starting point is 00:02:24 ability to respond based on users' social content like Facebook Marketplace and Instagram, as well as to connect to third-party services like Gmail, Apple, and Google calendars, open table, or other websites via a browser. By contrast, the free meta-AI app released last April focuses on image and short video generation and offers a less personalized experience. Muse is free to use within limits, but a $20 or $100 a month subscription comes with more weekly tokens. Meta has a hit on its hands with Muse, analysts from Evercore ISI wrote in a note on Monday. It amounts to a very tangible sign of successful product innovation and is evidence that Meta's $200 billion AI investments, quote, will not have been in vain, the analysts led by Mark Mahaney, added.

Starting point is 00:03:11 The user trend suggests a, quote, potentially very dramatic new driver of usage and engagement for meta and could bring substantial new monetization opportunities for meta in the form of advertising, subscriptions and transaction revenue share. The Evercore researchers said, shares of meta jumped 11% on Monday, reaching its highest closed since last October. The percentage gain was the biggest since April 2025. The stock had been little changed this year before today's rally. The early success of Muse has also helped lift the stocks of some of Meta's key suppliers, particularly makers of microprocessors, advanced microdevices surge nearly 10%, pushing its market value above $1 trillion. Intel rose 12% and arm holdings soared 17%. End quote.

Starting point is 00:03:54 Also, meanwhile, unlike Amazon, Shopify says it's willing to play ball with Muse, quoting the journal. Shopify, whose platform lets businesses sell, manage orders, and process payments online, said it will integrate Meta's Muse AI app with ShopPay. one-tap checkout service that stores buyers shipping and billing information. The move aims to offer an easy and delightful way to shop and check out with Muse. Shopify's chief executive, Tobias Lockhees said in a Monday post on X. Meta released Muse, an AI assistant that can book doctor's appointments and manage finances among other tasks two weeks ago.

Starting point is 00:04:33 We want to give our Musers access to a wide range of stores to find the absolute perfect products. Meta's chief AI officer Alexander Wang said in a post on X regarding the partnership with Shopify. Deutsche Bank analysts said the company's collaboration marks another proof point that leading AI platforms are integrating with Shopify's commerce infrastructure, helping to quell investor concerns that AI agents and personal shoppers could upend its business. In fact, the partnership suggests the opposite and reinforces Shopify's core strengths. Structured product data through Shopify catalog, merchant connectivity, trusted checkout through shop pay, and the underlying infrastructure required to complete an order, the analyst said in a note.

Starting point is 00:05:11 Shares of Shopify closed up 7.3% on Monday, end quote. Microsoft has laid off 268 Xbox staffers across Halo and other studios as part of their ongoing gaming reset. Activision will now take over Halo and two other game franchises, quoting the verge. Microsoft is laying off around 200. 60 Xbox employees today as part of an ongoing reset of its gaming business. 1600 Xbox employees were impacted by layoffs in July with Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, describing the cuts as the most significant restructure in Xbox history.

Starting point is 00:05:56 Today's layoffs are part of the 3,200 roles that were previously confirmed to be impacted over the course of Microsoft's 2027 financial year, which ends in June 2027. We are eliminating 268 roles across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer says Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty in a memo. The actions completed since July. Inclusive of the studio, Devastitures brings us roughly three quarters of the way through previously announced restructuring. I am deeply grateful for what our colleagues have built, and I know how difficult today will be for those leaving and the teams around them. The Xbox restructuring also includes Microsoft selling off four Xbox studios as part of its significant gaming cuts,

Starting point is 00:06:40 while two studios, double-fine and compulsion games have already gone independent, deals to sell off Ninja Theory have fallen through. As a result, Microsoft is now proceeding with a consultation period to close the studio unless the company can find another buyer, end quote. And quoting IGN. Halo moving to Activision follows a string of tough releases for the franchise under Xbox's stewardship. Microsoft bought the Halo franchise when it purchased its original developer, Bungy in 2000.

Starting point is 00:07:11 Bungee then split from Microsoft to become independent again in 2007 and went to work on Looter Shooter Destiny as part of a high-profile 10-year publishing deal with Activision. Meanwhile, Microsoft set up 343 Industries, so named after 343 Guilty Spark from the Halo

Starting point is 00:07:27 Games, to take Halo into a new era. 2012's Halo 4 was the first Halo game released by 343. It was followed by 2015's Halo 5 Guardians, which in turn was followed by 2021's much-delayed Halo Infinite. Halo Infinite in particular struggled, and this year's Halo Campaign Evolved, a remake of the beloved first Halo game, suffered

Starting point is 00:07:50 problems of its own. In 2024, 343 Industries changed its names to Halo Studios and announced plans to work on multiple new Halo games that would all be developed on Epic's Unreal Engine. The announcements were unveiled in a seven-minute video shown ahead of the Halo World Championship's grand finals, which showcased the results. of Project Foundry, an experimental project designed to show a Halo game built using Unreal Engine. While it was not much more than a tech demo, the video offered a glimpse at a fresh beginning for Xbox's flagship franchise in the wake of Halo Infinite's troubled launch. The question is, will any of that work be carried forward by Activision, end quote.

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Starting point is 00:09:50 From our openweight AI models, getting close to frontier AI models file, we have a new top scoring open weight model. Say hello to Memo v2.6 Pro and Flash. The pro model allegedly performs on par with Opus 5 and GPT 5.6 soul across various agent benchmarks, quoting Venture Beat. In a surprising upset, Chinese electric car and consumer electronics manufacturer, Xiaomi, has released the latest version of its growing family of Memo language models. And Memo v.2.6 Pro has arrived as the top performing open weight model in the world on third-party benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index, scoring 46. That puts Zhaomi's new flagship ahead of proprietary models, including XAI's GROC 4.6, currently at 44. Google's Gemini 3.8 Flash currently at 41 on artificial analysis latest scoring methodology.

Starting point is 00:10:52 It also places Memo v. 2.6 Pro tied with the newly released GROC 4.7, which debuted the same day and also scores 46 and above fellow Chinese open weights models, DeepSeek v. 4.1 Flash at 39 and DeepSeek v. 4.1 Pro at 36. The result is striking not just because Zhaumee is better known internationally for its smartphones, electric vehicles, and consumer electronics than front tier AI. It is also because Mimo v.2.6 Pro is open weight, MIT licensed, and dramatically cheaper to access through Xiaomi's API than many proprietary models around its performance tier. In other words, indie developers and enterprises alike can download it for free off-hugging face, customize it, or fine-tune it to their specific uses, run it themselves on their own

Starting point is 00:11:38 or rented hardware, and use it in their production workflows, all without paying Xiaomi a They can also run it off Xiaomi's APIs, a trickier proposition for those who have restrictions on using Chinese-based servers for among the cheapest rates per million tokens. Xiaomi charges 43.5 cents per million

Starting point is 00:11:56 uncashed input tokens and 87 cents per million output tokens. Artificial analysis measures the model at 13 cents per intelligence index task and output speed at roughly 134 tokens per second, confirming a 1 million token content, window with text, image, audio, and video input. The flagship is joined by Mimo v. 2.6 Flash,

Starting point is 00:12:20 a smaller and substantially cheaper model, only 14 cents and 28 cents per million input and output tokens respectively, that retains the same 1 million token context window and native multimodal capabilities while targeting high volume production workloads. It's the second cheapest major frontier model available in the world over its application programming interface by our assessment. Jaumei is also releasing Mimo V2.6 Pro Ultra Speed, which it says can generate at up to 20 times the normal pro output speed. Taken together, V2.6 looks less like a single model launch than the latest step in

Starting point is 00:12:57 Jaami's effort to build an entire open agent stack. Foundation models, coding agents, harnesses, reinforcement learning environments, and now the training infrastructure behind them, end quote. Here's something that I definitely didn't anticipate telling you about today. Apple has its own concert venue. Say hello to Apple Music Hall, a 600-person live music venue built in its London headquarters at Battersea Power Station that also features two recording and mixing studios. Quoting the BBC, the 600 capacity venue will host one-off shows by major recording artists and new bands, all of which will be filmed and broadcast live online. line. Abel Music's Vice President Oliver Schusser told BBC News, the facility which is expected to open in the coming weeks, contained more cameras and speakers than any venue of its size anywhere in the world. It comes as London's live music scene faces huge pressure with 45 venues closing in the capital last year alone. It's a reflection of a national trend between 2020 and 2025 as the cost of living increased and people made post-COVID lifestyle changes about 400 of Britain's clubs closed. The rate in London is higher than the rest of the the country so the arrival of a deep-pocketed tech company could give independent venue

Starting point is 00:14:16 owner's cause for concern. But Schuster said its new venture was not trying to steal customers. We're not trying to be in the live business. We're not trying to compete with anyone. We're going to run the venue like a venue with tickets and everything, but the sole purpose for us is to do great music with artists, to connect artists with fans, and to broadcast the content on Apple Music. We have really no interest in trying to be in the way of anyone else, and that's one of the main reasons it's a smaller space. The venue known as Apple Music Hall marks the company's return to London nine years after it scrapped a popular iTunes festival, which saw acts like Lady Gaga, Elton John, Brittany Spears, and Adele play free concerts at venues such as Coco and the Roundhouse.

Starting point is 00:14:59 Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy welcomed the development, calling it a huge vote of confidence in the UK as a global creative powerhouse and a signal of just how strong our creative sectors really are. Details of the opening act are expected to be announced soon. BBC News got an early look at the venue as the finishing touches were being made in early September. It's a small, intimate space with fluted vaults and brick-lined walls that echo the Art Deco architecture of the former power station. But Echo itself won't be an issue. Even the bricks have been specially selected to absorb reflected sounds. The stage is 38 feet long and can be configured for both in the round and more. traditional front-facing shows while the dressing rooms are kitted out with on-sweet showers and dedicated costume storage areas.

Starting point is 00:15:47 The facility also contains new studios for Apple Music radio stations, which will move from their current home in Kings Cross, and dedicated rooms for DJ mixes, writing camps, and band rehearsals. The whole building is wired for video and audio, meaning artists can walk in, record a podcast, appear on a radio show, and live stream a gig in the same day, end quote. Finally today, another thing that wasn't on my bingo card. A16Z has its own college, quoting the journal. Andresen Horowitz has a message for up-and-coming tech talent, don't drop out of school to start a company. Come do school with us instead. The storied venture capital firm is investing $35 million in an unaccredited San Francisco-based two-year alternative to traditional college for students ages 16 to 22, though name.

Starting point is 00:16:41 the Horowitz-Andreason Academy. The school will operate as an independent business led by Gagin Biani, a co-founder of the ed-tech platform Udeme. Some of the heaviest hitters in tech are serving as founding partners. Anthropic, Google, meta-platforms, Nvidia, and Open AI, among others, will provide access to software and compute and open their offices for learning purposes. Applications to the Academy will open this week for the founding class who will begin a one-year program in the fall of 2027 tuition-free. In 2008, pending regulatory approval, the full two-year offering will begin with tuition in line with elite private universities, says Biani. The idea is to create an AI-native education offering so that these students can be ready for jobs at the top leading tech companies

Starting point is 00:17:27 or to start their own tech company, he says. In the modern world, knowing how to build and ship things is even more important than it's ever been. Once enrolled, students will spend up to 80% of their time on project-based learning such as building an AI model, creating a product or interviewing industry experts. Attendees of the academy will also have the opportunity to participate in co-ops, essentially internships with founding partners. Silicon Valley has long sought to disrupt higher education through online learning. Now, alternative education models that emphasize real-world skills mixed with AI tutoring

Starting point is 00:18:00 are gaining traction, especially among high-earning parents who believe traditional education is broken. As with any new educational model that hasn't been time-tested, experts can be skeptical. John Friedman, Dean of the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, and an economist who has studied long-term outcomes from college, says having top industry leaders speak to students is an obvious plus from which students will benefit. But there are distinct benefits to schools with proven track records and teachers with decades of experience as well, he adds, not to mention environments where students interact with others whose career plans diverge from their own. There's something to learning how to engage and cooperate and figure out how to work with all these different people in

Starting point is 00:18:40 the world, Friedman says. College is still a great option for most kids, but there is a particular type of student for whom it is no longer suitable and for whom the Academy and the firm can serve, Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreason Horowitz said in a pre-recorded podcast about the school. The AI revolution is likely to be as transformational for jobs as the Industrial Revolution, and many kids would benefit from a learning environment that doesn't involve sitting in five hours of lectures a day, he adds. So yes, I'm aware there have been some rough edits published these last couple of episodes.

Starting point is 00:19:24 That is because, both on Friday and yesterday, our podcast host, who, for now at least, shall remain nameless, has somehow made it so that I can't, you know, publish. It's too complicated to explain and get into, but I didn't publish the last two episodes myself. I had to hand them over segment by segment, element by element, to have them upload it, and they did about as good a job as you heard. Who knows? I haven't tried to publish this one yet, so maybe it'll happen today, too.

Starting point is 00:19:54 But, FYI, I'm aware that certain parts of the last two shows have been rough, and hopefully that will not happen again. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Meta Finally Has An AI Hit

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