Tech Brew Ride Home - Our Shoe Company Is Now An AI Company

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

Snap is cutting 16% of its workforce—about 1,000 people—as Spiegel blames AI for making everyone more efficient (read: expendable). Allbirds, the shoe company that sold for $39M, is pivoting its shell to become an AI compute provider called NewBird AI. OpenAI drops a cybersecurity-specific model, Google launches a desktop search app and Chrome AI Skills, and law firms say AI-generated client docs are actually creating MORE work, not less. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says the company plans to lay off ~1,000 full-time employees, or 16% of its global workforce (Bloomberg) Allbirds, sold last week for $39M, says it aims to become an AI compute provider; BIRD jumps 350%+ (FT) OpenAI rolls out GPT-5.4-Cyber, a fine-tuned variant for defensive cybersecurity (Bloomberg) Google launches a Windows desktop app with a Spotlight-like search box (9to5Google) Google launches Skills, repeatable AI prompts that Chrome users can run with a keyboard shortcut (Wired) Law firms say lawyers are spending more time responding to AI-generated client documents (FT) Learn more at liquid.trade/techbrew. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at AKA.m.m.S. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Wednesday, April 15th, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. Snap is cutting 16% of its workforce blaming AI for making everyone more efficient. Allbirds, the shoe company, is pivoting to become checks, notes, an AI compute provider. OpenAI drops a cybersecurity specific model.

Google launches a desktop search app and Chrome AI skills. And law firms say AI generated clients are actually creating more work, not less. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. More deep layoffs in tech in a memo SNAP CEO Evan Spiegel has told employees that SNAP plans to lay off around 1,000 full-time employees or 16% of its global workforce to cut costs and achieve profitability. Quoting Bloomberg. He cited improvements in artificial intelligence technology that let SNAP employees move more quickly. The company is also closing more than 300 open roles. Spiegel told staffers, many of whom were told to work from home on Wednesday.

day that the job cuts and pullback on hiring will reduce SNAP's annualized cost base by more than $500 million by the second half of this year. Snap estimated that total revenue rose 12% to $1.53 billion in the first quarter, according to updated investor materials. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization came in at approximately $233 million during the period. Snap's shares jumped as much as 8.9% after markets opened in New York. Last fall, I described Snap as facing a crucible moment requiring a new way of working that is faster and more efficient while pivoting toward profitable growth. Spegel wrote in the memo, which was reviewed by Bloomberg News. Over the past several months, we have carefully reviewed

the work required to best serve our community and partners and made tough choices to prioritize the investments we believe are most likely to create long-term value. Snap's stock is down almost 31 percent so far this year as the company faces challenges to user growth, including efforts by lawmakers and regulators around the world to enforce social media bans for teens. The company's efforts to overhaul its advertising business have also delivered mixed results. And while Spiegel is working to sell a vision for augmented reality glasses, which the company plans to debut later this year, it has leaned heavily on outside firms to power its AI offerings. Larger rivals are spending aggressively to build and develop their own state-of-the-art,

AI products, and infrastructure. The job cuts arrived just weeks after activist investor, Erenic Capital Management took a stake in the company and called for swift changes to improve its financial performance, including a recommendation that SNAP cut its workforce in hopes of boosting the stock price. Like many of your peers, you overhired, the investor wrote in a letter to Spiegel last month, unlike your peers, you haven't course corrected. Spiegel's note to employees didn't mention whether the job cuts were related to Erenic's recent demands. While these changes are necessary to realize SNAP's long-term potential, Spiegel said of the cuts, we believe that rapid advancements and artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work,

increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers. The Santa Monica, California-based company has made other significant cuts to its staff in recent years. Snap slashed about 20% of its workforce in 2022, following a slowdown in ad revenue growth and another 10% worldwide in 2024, end quote. There are pivots and then there are whatever this is, quoting the FT. Allbirds is a San Francisco maker of wool shoes that was once valued at more than $4 billion. It was sold this month for $39 million to American Exchange Group, the stock having slumped by more than 99% since its flotation on NASDAQ in 2021.

Now the plan for its shell listing is to pivot its business to AI compute infrastructure with a long-term vision to become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service and AI-Native cloud solutions provider. In connection with this pivot, the company anticipates changing its name to New Bird AI. With shareholder approval, Allbirds will raise $40 million via convertible notes from an institutional investor. It doesn't identify. Investors who went into the stock expecting eco-friendly creps will be offered a special dividend, end quote. And quoting TechCrunch.

It's objectively pretty funny that Allbirds is becoming an AI company, not because it's unusual for companies to pivot, but because of how extreme this pivot is. The maker of the shoes once craved by the Silicon Valley Tech set is now going to be a provider of GPUs. It's somewhat absurd and risky, but you can see how the business came to this decision. After the asset and brand sale, Allbirds can keep the public company's shell. It's been traded on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol bird, and then reuse it to invest in the hot AI sector. This recalls the time in 2017 when the Long Island Ice Tea Company pivoted to the blockchain, prompting the stock to jump some 275% after the rebranding. That pivot didn't pan out as the NASDAQ stock exchange delisted the stock the following year after Bitcoin fever died down.

Allbirds turned new bird is likely hoping for a different outcome. The company says that the financing and the asset sale are still subject to stockholder approval with a meeting plan to take place on May 18th. If the sale goes through, stockholders will receive a dividend during the third quarter. The new owner of the Allbirds brand and assets, American Exchange Group, will continue to make products for Allbirds customers. Meanwhile, Newbird AI plans to use the new financing to acquire GPU assets, which it will offer to customers seeking AI compute capacity. Over time, the company hopes to grow its service offerings through partnerships and even strategic mergers and acquisitions if the opportunities arise, end quote. Open AI is rolling out GPT 5.4 Cyber, a fine-tuned GPT 5.4 variant for defensive.

cybersecurity use cases to some participants of its trusted access for cyber program. Quoting Bloomberg. The chat GPT makers said Tuesday that it's beginning to roll out GPT 5.4 cyber, which is aimed at finding issues in its software so organizations can fix them. GPT 5.4 cyber also places fewer constraints on the ways users can probe the model for that task, OpenAI said. The model will be offered to some participants of OpenAI's trusted access for cyber program, which the company rolled out in February to let certain customers and cybersecurity professionals try its most capable offerings. Opening I plans to increase the number of participants in the early access program.

Initially, it will let hundreds of users test out the new model before expanding that to thousands in the coming weeks, end quote. And quoting Silicon Republic. This version of GPD 5.4 lowers the refusal boundary for legitimate cybersecurity work as a more permissive model. Open AI said it is beginning by deploying GPD 5.4 cyber to vetted security vendors, organizations, and researchers. The chat GPT maker only began integrating cyber-specific safeguards into its model deployments in 2025 and launched Codex Security to identify and fix vulnerabilities in March. In February, it introduced the trusted access for cyber framework as a way to verify the identities of cybersecurity workers, end quote. Not exactly AI-related, but Google has launched a Windows desktop app with a MacOS Spotlight-like searchbox for the web,

also Google Drive, local files, and installed apps, screen share, and more, quoting 9 to 5 Google. After testing got underway in September, the Google app for desktop is now launching for Windows users globally in English. This app is intended to bring the, quote, best of Google search right to your desktop. The Alt Plus Space keyboard shortcut opens a search box for the web, Google Drive, and local files, and installed apps. Those last two aspects make for a very Mac Spotlight-like experience. Web search includes AI mode with the ability to invoke Google Lens for specific search, translate text slash images, or get homework help and more. There's also the ability to share your entire screen or a specific window to ask contextual questions. Results open in a floating window with the ability to ask follow-up prompts.

The UI is very much aligned with the mobile search experience. The Google app is now available on Windows 10 plus in English around the world after previously requiring Google Labs sign up. You can download from Google Labs now. Google is framing the application as a continuation of the mobile clients that phone users are already familiar with. There's no word on MacOS, but the Gemini team is working on such an application. The company rarely makes consumer desktop apps and instead favors the browser with progressive web apps.

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on the Ask Gemini Sparkle icon in the upper right corner of the screen. Then type a forward slash in the prompt box to pick which skill you would like to run. After you select one, Gemini analyzes the information from the browser tabs you shared within the parameters of the details laid out in the skill. Here's the full prompt from Google's example of a protein maximizer skill to show how these can be used to guide Gemini and Chrome. Analyze the recipe on the current web page. Identify all ingredients and estimate their protein count, suggest substitutions or additions to maximize the overall protein content of the recipe while maintaining the integrity of the original recipe's flavor profile. Output the revised recipe with protein content listed for each

ingredient and the total protein per serving. For my experience testing generative AI features in different browsers, I wouldn't be surprised if these tools were a bit glitchy at launch and gradually improved over the next few months. It's also easy to imagine this kind of browser tool catching on with productivity nerds looking to streamline workflows and save clicks. Even so, skills seem like the kind of AI feature most Chrome users probably won't even realize as an option as they're browsing the web. Users who aren't interested in this feature but still want to use Chrome have the option of removing the Ask Gemini button by going into their settings and opening the AI Innovations tab. Then open the Gemini in Chrome section and make sure that the top toggle on that

page is turned off. When the setting is toggled off, the Ask Gemini button disappears from the top of the Chrome browser, end quote. And quoting Silicon angle. The feature activates after users enter a request into Gemini and the chatbot displays its answer. A button below the AI generated response provides the option to turn the prompt into a template or skill. Users can give the skill a title and modify the text of the original prompt if needed. The next time you need it, select your save skill in Gemini in Chrome by typing forward slash or clicking the plus sign button, and your skill will run on the page you're viewing along with any other tabs you select. Chrome Product Manager Hafsa Ismail wrote in a blog post, you can edit your save skills and create new ones at any time. A single skill can contain multiple instructions.

A user could, for example, build a skill that identifies the ingredients of a dessert, mentioned by an article and displays low sugar substitutes. It's also possible to customize details such as the format in which Gemini displays its answer. Google has released more than 50 skills that are available through a new prompt library. They speed up tasks such as summarizing YouTube videos and picking GIFs. Microsoft and Perplexity AI have both embedded features similar to skills in their respective browsers. OpenAI Group, however, doesn't yet support this shortcut in its AI-powered Atlas browser. That may change in the wake of Google's update.

end quote. Finally today, law firms say lawyers are spending more time responding to swaths of AI-generated client documents, potentially leading firms to raise fixed-fee contract prices. Quoting the F.T. One partner at a U.S. litigation firm told the F.T. He had received so many AI-generated emails from one client that his firm could not keep up with the barrage. The firm decided it would only respond at appropriate intervals to points it considered to be material, As litigation lawyers typically charge by the hour, the partner said, the longer it takes for us to respond, read, digest, and respond to long AI-generated instruction emails, the greater our time costs will be. One patent attorney partner said her firm could raise charges for fixed-fee contracts as it had been

absorbing some of the costs associated with time spent reviewing AI-generated documents. She said clients often approached her firm with AI-generated patents because the documents had encountered significant problems at the patent office. Chatbots often generated pages and pages of stuff to go through that may or may not be relevant and that certainly slows down the process, the attorney said. Carrie Westland, head of Adelshaw Goddard's innovation group, said the impact of AI on legal fees was still developing. The time spent by the firm's lawyers reviewing or responding to AI-generated content was included in a fixed-fee contract. However, for clients built hourly, Westland said, obviously, that's another hour on the clock if you're asking us to review the

AI output. She said Adelshock Goddard was receiving AI-generated correspondence from clients across all of its practice areas. The material often needed properly validating and reviewing, and it's not reducing the work at all in some ways, Westland added. Greg Falcoph, a senior disputes partner at Michkon DeRaya, told the FT that clients were increasingly using the technology to suggest litigation strategies or for drafts of letters that they want me to send to the opponent on my firm's letterhead. While AI drafted strategies might cost a little bit of extra time to review, letters posted a bigger problem because they often failed to follow Michigan's house style, he said. He said AI was more of an issue when dealing directly with business owners and people without

legal training rather than with clients in-house lawyers. AI is playing a bigger role in the legal profession with UK firm Shoesmiths adding $1 million to its bonus pot last year as a reward for staff entering 1 million prompts into Microsoft's co-pilot. U.S. firm Ropes and Gray has encouraged junior lawyers to spend a fifth of their billable hours researching and experimenting with the technology. Although AI has contributed to job cuts at firms such as Clifford Chance, concerns around client confidentiality, data protection, and accuracy mean the technology is yet to replace lawyers en masse, end quote. Thanks to everybody who got in touch to volunteer their AI show and tell projects. If I think your project is something we can talk about, I'll be in touch. but thanks to everyone who emailed in regardless.

Quick additional requests, though, I didn't hear from a ton of, you know, lawyers, teachers, etc., which is no surprise given the audience for this podcast, but it was mostly people in the tech industry. So let me ask the question a different way. Do you have a friend who is in a non-tech position like lawyer, doctor, teacher, etc., a friend, an in-law, whatever, who is raving to you

about their cool new AI workflow? If so, maybe see if you can put me in touch with them. Just a shot in the dark there. Talk to you tomorrow. Did you know if your windows are bare, indoor temperatures can go up 20 degrees? Turn the temperature down with blinds.com and get up to 50% off custom window treatments

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