In partnership with
Hey folks,
Hoping your Wednesday's off to a strong start - perfect time mid-week to supercharge your AI game for the rest of it. Let's dive into the latest that's buzzing for developers, creators, and small business owners like you.
✨TODAY’s HIGHLIGHTS
Newo Raises $25M for AI Voice Agents: Startup Newo just scored big funding to build human-like AI receptionists for SMBs—24/7 call handling without the payroll hit.
Enterprise AI Agents Go Live: Intuit, Uber, and State Farm are trialing autonomous agents in real workflows, from tax processing to fraud detection—hinting at what's next for your ops.
4 in 5 SMBs Eye AI Marketing: New data shows 54% of small businesses already using AI tools for marketing, with 27% more jumping in by year-end—time to level up your campaigns.
Qwen Tops Open Source Charts: Alibaba's Qwen series overtakes Llama in downloads, giving devs free access to top-tier models via Hugging Face.
How can AI power your income?
Ready to transform artificial intelligence from a buzzword into your personal revenue generator
HubSpot’s groundbreaking guide "200+ AI-Powered Income Ideas" is your gateway to financial innovation in the digital age.
Inside you'll discover:
A curated collection of 200+ profitable opportunities spanning content creation, e-commerce, gaming, and emerging digital markets—each vetted for real-world potential
Step-by-step implementation guides designed for beginners, making AI accessible regardless of your technical background
Cutting-edge strategies aligned with current market trends, ensuring your ventures stay ahead of the curve
Download your guide today and unlock a future where artificial intelligence powers your success. Your next income stream is waiting.
🛠️ TOOL OF THE WEEK
What it is
Kiro is an AI-powered dev environment from AWS that turns natural language prompts into full production-ready apps. It starts by generating detailed specs—user stories, task lists, designs-before coding, unlike snippet-only tools.
Who it's for
Developers and small teams tired of fixing AI-generated messes; creators building side projects; SMBs needing quick custom software without hiring extra hands.
Highlights
Builds complete systems with tests, docs, and checkpoints for easy rewinds.
Team features via AWS IAM for shared access and cost control.
VS Code compatible, powered by Claude models-handles multimodal inputs like sketches to code.
Free preview available now, with hooks to auto-update docs and enforce standards.
Try this prompt
"Build a simple inventory tracker for my small shop: track stock levels, alert on low items via email, and generate weekly reports. Use SQLite and a basic web UI."
Actionable takeaway: Sign up for the preview at AWS and test on your next feature-could cut dev time in half.
📊 AI INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
Intuit, Uber, and State Farm are pushing AI agents into live enterprise workflows, handling everything from QuickBooks automation to dynamic pricing. This matters for you because these aren't pilots anymore-they're scaling, showing SMBs how agents can tackle edge cases that rigid scripts miss. Expect your tools to follow suit soon.
OpenAI's ChatGPT just hit over 10% monthly growth again, per Sam Altman – that's explosive demand for AI in everyday tools. Why it matters: Devs and SMBs can build on stable, scaling APIs without worrying about platform wobbles
Newo.ai just raised $25M to expand AI voice agents as virtual receptionists for small businesses. Why care? Missed calls cost sales; this gives 24/7 human-like responses, freeing you from phone duty. Perfect for creators and SMBs scaling customer service on a budget.
⭐ OPEN SOURCE SPOTLIGHT
Alibaba's Qwen models are dominating open-source AI, surpassing Llama in popularity with over 300M downloads and strong reasoning benchmarks.
Available free on Hugging Face and GitHub (check https://huggingface.co/Qwen), these LLMs shine in multilingual tasks, tool use, and instruction-following—ideal for devs building custom apps without API costs.
For small teams, it's a game-changer: fork, fine-tune, and deploy locally to avoid vendor lock-in. Devs are raving about its edge over Western models in some evals.
🧠 MINDSET SHIFT
As Chinese open-source models like Qwen pull ahead in accessibility and performance, are Western labs' closed APIs creating a divide that hands free power to agile devs and SMBs?
This could flip the script: proprietary hype vs. open innovation anyone can tweak. What do you think-opportunity or over-reliance risk? Reply and share your take.
🔐 PRIVACY PLAY
AI Agents in Enterprise
With AI agents entering workflows at places like Uber and State Farm, data handling is key—agents pull from docs, emails, and systems.
Actionable advice: Always set strict access controls (like AWS IAM for tools like Kiro) and audit logs for agent actions. For SMBs, start with on-prem open-source options like Qwen to keep sensitive customer data in-house. Trade-off: slower scaling but zero leak risks.
That's your AI boost for the week—go build something awesome. What grabbed you most? Hit reply, I read every one.
Learn AI in 5 minutes a day
What’s the secret to staying ahead of the curve in the world of AI? Information. Luckily, you can join 2,000,000+ early adopters reading The Rundown AI — the free newsletter that makes you smarter on AI with just a 5-minute read per day.
That's your AI boost for the week-go build something awesome. What grabbed you most? Hit reply, I read every one.
Talk soon,
The AI Learning Hub Team