| Potato chips are the result of a petty feud. | The snack was accidentally invented in 1853 by Chef George Crum. A patron kept sending back fried potatoes because they were too thick. So Crum sliced them paper-thin as a joke. | Well, the joke was on him. The customer loved the crispy creation, and the chip has been a staple ever since. | What’s in store: | The equity gap costing Google its best employees OpenAI's new secret ingredient is a chip called Jalapeño Mindstream Picks: Teenage Engineering just gave its viral sampler a massive upgrade.
| Read Time: 5 minutes |
|
| | | AI WARS | | | In Silicon Valley, job titles are temporary. But equity is forever. | Google has been an obvious leader in the AI revolution. They’ve recruited and cultivated some of the best minds in the game. Their compensation is wildly competitive. And those gourmet lunches? Swoon worthy. Yet, all of these perks weren’t enough to keep employees from drifting. | Over the past few weeks, Google has watched top talent walk out the door and into the arms of their competitors. | At first glance, it’s easy to assume that this exodus is due to a fractured AI strategy or a misaligned company culture. But the reason may be something much simpler: | Pre-IPO equity. | As OpenAI and Anthropic race toward Wall St, top players from established companies – like Google – are making the jump to the rapidly rising startups. | The recent departures | Noam Shazeer joined OpenAI, which has filed for IPO this month Nobel Prize winner, John Jumper, left for Anthropic Gemini researchers Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel are also headed to Anthropic
| How startups outbid tech giants | Labs like Anthropic and OpenAI are able to offer equity before they go public. Whereas Google’s compensation package includes RSUs – Restricted Stock Options – tied to a $4T market cap. Which, by their very nature, are… restricted. | So when a world-class AI engineer is given the option to pivot to a more agile competitor, the offer is pretty enticing. Especially when the pre-IPO equity could drastically increase their net worth. | And make no mistake, this revolving door is an issue for the tech giants. Because in the AI race, a company’s roster is a competitive advantage you can't manufacture overnight. | Google may have lost this battle of the talent wars. But the fight is still far from over. | These bros ain’t loyal. - TL | Okay, but let’s talk long game. Who is going to win this race? | | Vote for live results and see results + opinions from yesterday at the bottom of the email. |
|
| | Why are 1998 pennies worth more than 1997 pennies? | Find the answer at the bottom of the email! |
|
| | Recall turns your saved knowledge into a searchable, conversational second brain that resurfaces what you've read and written as you browse, quizzes you to make it stick, and connects to any tool via API and MCP. | PrompTessor is a full prompt engineering workspace that generates, scores, optimises, and reverse-engineers prompts from any content, then saves the best ones to a shared library so nothing gets lost in a chat history again. | Serno assembles a custom team of AI experts with distinct roles to investigate your hardest business decisions from every angle, surfacing contradictions, blind spots, and structured arguments instead of a single agreeable answer. | Hedy runs discreetly on your phone during meetings and lectures, whispering real-time suggestions, talking points, and contextual insights in your ear so you always know exactly what to say next. | Cursor is an AI-first code editor that lets you chat with your codebase, generate code from plain instructions, and fix bugs automatically, all inside a familiar VSCode-style environment with your existing extensions intact. |
|
| | | OPENAI | | | The latest batch of jalapeño chips isn’t made by Doritos or Pringles. It’s made by OpenAI. | (Yes, you read that correctly.) | After spending years running on Nvidia’s hardware, the lab has taken matters into its own hands. OpenAI partnered with Broadcom to develop an AI chip, named Jalapeño. It’s an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), which means it’s more task–specific than Nvidia’s general GPUs. | That means the new processor will drastically reshape how OpenAI scales its products… and just in time for its forthcoming IPO. | By the numbers: | Jalapeño took ~9 months to design, with the help of current AI models accelerating the development process. Broadcom shares have risen 10% in 2026, nearly 7x their market value since 2022. OpenAI plans to deploy the chip later this year and fully scale through early 2028.
| Okay, but why now? | So far, OpenAI’s strategy has heavily relied on buying up Nvidia GPUs as quickly as possible. Which means they’re highly dependent on third-party suppliers. | Jalapeño doesn’t just allow the start-up to get more specific with its processes. It’s a move toward complete, vertical integration. AKA: the “full stack”. This creates more efficient, cost-effective, and self-reliant operations. | Looks like the competition is getting spicy. | In the words of the iconic Paris Hilton, “that’s hot” - TL |
|
| | Space: Space: June’s Strawberry Moon rises tonight, bringing the lowest full moon of the year and a striking golden glow near the horizon.
Business: BT and Verizon will combine their international operations in a 50/50 joint venture, ending BT’s long-running search for a buyer for its global business.
Music: Metallica donated £20,000 to Cardiff Foodbank during their UK tour, helping provide around 9,000 meals for people experiencing homelessness. | Don’t Miss: Teenage Engineering has released a major software update for its EP-133 KO II sampler, adding long-requested features like USB audio, sample reverse, an arpeggiator, and longer recording times. The update also introduces lo-fi sample rate options and workflow improvements for chopping and manipulating samples. |
|
| | Image of the Day |  | Artwork submitted by Mindstream reader Samantha: “A gigantic ancient cave with mysterious ancient symbols” |
| Daily Image Prompt | GoPro fisheye close-up of a rabbit sniffing the lens |
|
| Submit your artwork to Mindstream → |
|
| | “What's your AI fitness equivalent?” | Gym membership never used (subscriptions gathering dust) - 38% | Marathon runner (daily user, slightly obsessive) - 45% ✅ | Personal trainer (building tools for others) - 10% | Other - tell us! - 7% | Your Views: | “Should use it more for bigger tasks not just fixing emails” - mala | “Use it everyday, but have not gotten the hang yet, to make it work for me.” - andre | “Dabbling. Using for personal use and trying to learn how to use it for workflows, specifically onboarding” - sc197 | Submit your opinions in our polls to be featured! |
|
| Riddle Me This Answer: Because there are more of them! | #1125
I’m sure this number is very meaningful to someone, somewhere. |  | | | |
|
