Brian Fritton

I think @stripe just mass produced a business model for every AI startup on earth and increased their TAM exponentially. Customer buys a shirt for $40, Stripe takes 2.9% + 30 cents. It's a simple formula, but token billing is completely different. AI costs are variable. They shift by model, by provider, by week. A startup using Claude for 40% of inference and GPT-4o for 60% has a blended cost structure that changes every time Anthropic or OpenAI adjusts pricing... which is constantly. Stripe is now ingesting those real-time model prices, applying the startup's target markup, metering per-customer usage, and generating the invoice automatically. That's constructing unit economics at a scale and complexity far beyond anything in traditional payments. And the data asset being created by them is a massive moat. OpenAI knows what OpenAI charges, and Anthropic knows what Anthropic charges. But Stripe will know what every model charges, what every startup pays, what every startup marks up, and what every end customer actually consumes. But the gateway is where this gets really interesting. Stripe's AI gateway routes inference, returns the response, and attributes tokens to the customer in one API call. Today it's "pick the best model." Tomorrow it's "Stripe recommends the model that optimizes your target margin across 12 providers in real time." The moment that recommendation engine turns on, model providers start competing on Stripe's terms. Pricing power inverts from provider to platform. This is AWS turned sideways (or i guess diagonally). Amazon didn't build apps... they built the infrastructure every app depended on, then used the data to optimize the infrastructure itself. Stripe is running the same playbook on AI economics instead of AI compute. I truly believe that token billing will make Stripe the most strategically important company in tech that doesn't train a model.

@shawngorham I'm really so sorry to hear this is happening. Wishing your wife, you and your family, and that child's family 1000% the best. I hope you're feeling the love and the best in medical excellence.

Since I post most my life online... wins and struggles This morning we got up to go to church I was in the kitchen drinking my morning glass of water. My wife yelled, I need water. So I started filling her a glass Then she screamed, everything is black, I cant see I sprinted to the room, right as I entered she fainted blackout. I caught her. Her body went limp, her eyes rolled back, her mouth opened and life flashed before my eyes. Its a picture I never want to re-live I sprinted for my phone to call 911 when I came back into the room she was awake, but limp. I held her, I prayed over her We landed in the ER for the next 7 hours While we were there a "code white" eta 5 minutes came across the speakers, I watched nurses scrambling. I googled code white - child with life threatening Within 5 minutes I heard the screams of a mother I never want to hear again. Whaling and Weeping. I was supposed to be at church, hands high singing praises to a God for everything good in my life. Now I am in the ER asking God to give me the same strength to sing the same praises Thats when faith becomes real So what happened? We dont know. All tests and blood work came back clear They did give her 2L of liquids and she still hasn't urinated - so possible severe dehydration Her body hasn't recovered from our car accident, she hasn't felt good, low appetite We think it just all caught up with her. Now we battle the fear of it happening again. She doesnt want to be alone, I dont want to leave her. If you are the praying type, pray for us. Pray for a family who lost a child today in the ER Much Love, Shawn

@nealkhosla So is the answer let govt daddy do mass domestic surveillance and autonomous murder drones with your product? That sounds like a f*ckin deal with the devil right about there to me.

As someone who usually disagrees with @DarioAmodei, I gotta give him *major* props for this one. “If you believe you have the right to force me—use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action." This is what Hank Rearden, the steel magnate from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, tells the government after disobeying its command to run his business in a manner contrary to his conscience. Amodei channeled Rearden’s spirit in a letter refusing to remove safeguards from Claude, as requested by the War Department.

@Suhail We're already there. This is not an overly difficult thing to do. The thing stopping most of it right now are ethical guardrails baked into the widely available models. Those are not unalike a lock on your front door. They might keep the random opportunist out but not much else.

We seem close to: - Give an agent access to a competitor app on a computer - Tell agent: Rebuild this app by using all its features - Agent tries app -> documents all flows/features/edge cases - The other agent builds all flows/features - They iterate trying/testing until done

Outside Anthropic's office in SF... intense moment!

@deanwball The crazy 2nd order thing I keep thinking about past the demands Hegseth and Trump are making of @AnthropicAI is that they are admitting they want to use AI to perform mass surveillance of Americans and make drones that can kill people without humans in the loop. That's insane.

The U.S. government just essentially announced its intention to impose Iran-level sanctions, or China-level entity listing, on an American company. This is by a profoundly wide margin the most damaging policy move I have ever seen USG try to take (it probably will not succeed).

@willdepue The crazy 2nd order thing I keep thinking about past the demands Hegseth and Trump are making of @AnthropicAI, is that they are admitting they want to use AI to perform mass surveillance of Americans and make drones that can kill people without humans in the loop. That's insane.

oh fuck. i can’t believe they did it

Zoning has been a scam. @JBPritzker just came out swinging. The suburbs have weaponized single-family zoning, parking minimums and permit BS to keep density out The BUILD plan JB just introduced is the first real answer: - Multi-unit housing on most residential lots, by right ≤2,500 sq ft: 1 unit 2,500–5,000 sq ft: up to 4 units 5,000–7,500 sq ft: up to 6 units 7,500+ sq ft: up to 8 units - ADUs legal everywhere statewide, no more local bans - Towns that take their sweet time with permits can lose control of the process - Parking minimums killed for middle housing - Impact fees standardized so towns can't price-out what they don't want built The next step is the General Assembly. Specific thresholds are still being negotiated, which means this is where it gets gutted if we're not paying attention. The NIMBY's are going to come out strong, we need to fight back.

A very insightful interview with an $MSFT employee who works on Copilot on the SaaS disruption debate: 1. According to him, AI doesn't eliminate software value; it redistributes it. He thinks the recent declines in software share prices due to AI risk are partially justified, as it can compress margins, lower switching costs, and shift value from the application layer to the platform or maybe even the model layer. He thinks companies with strong proprietary data, deep workflow integration, and AI execution capability are more likely to expand value rather than lose it. 2. He gives a good example of value for a SaaS provider. The advantage isn't that we host your data, it's that we see patterns like no single customer can see, explaining the value of pattern intelligence across millions of records. He also thinks that in an AI world, owning where revenue decisions happen may be more valuable than owning where attention happens. 3. If SaaS gross margins move from 85% down to 50-60%, the math forces a redesign of the SaaS model. He thinks that if 20-30% of gross margin disappears, the most logical offset is sales and marketing efficiency. The industry will no longer look like the classic SaaS industry, but will more closely resemble an infrastructure economy. Not all players can sustain that 30% operating margin. 4. According to him, $MSFT's Satya always says we're going to have 1.3 billion agents by 2028. He thinks we are rapidly moving from AI that answers to a more agentic mode where AI does. The next 6-12 months are all about orchestration and enterprise control. He thinks the year won't be about AI getting smarter, but more about AI becoming more reliable and integrated into real business processes. 5. He thinks OpenAI and Anthropic realized they can't win enterprise adoption with a raw model alone. They're building distribution, partnerships, and verticalization layers to solve real workflows, not just offer a smart chatbot. The battle is shifting from model intelligence to deployment simplicity and ROI clarity. The winning formula is reducing friction between capabilities and a business outcome. Enterprise adoption accelerates when AI feels like a feature of the existing system and not a science experiment that's just bolted on the side. found on @AlphaSenseInc

@jtotheren @sahilypatel Absolutely this. Currently building brand new AI workflows in N8N after running last biz on it, and have experienced the need to flex the job to the model.

@sahilypatel Not a chance. No real builder trusts or wants to use OpenAI for all parts of their workflow. Good at some things not great at others. Need the right tool for the job. Not to mention given the rate of change of models having model flexibility is key. Need flex to swap.

openai just killed n8n

Not at all predictable. What a shill @elonmusk. apnews.com/article/musk-l…

@DOGE I got a project for you that'll save the gov BILLIONS AND it isn't even life saving pre-committed medical contracts that need to be inflated in your reporting or anything! bbc.com/news/articles/…

The science has not failed. What’s failed is the political will to protect. The understanding that vaccines are not a luxury, they’re infrastructure. That trust is not optional, it’s strategic. That public health is not a cost, it’s a national security asset. 13/

Andrew Sullivan: "I do not care about the economy if the government in this country claims it can break down anyone's doors, seize anyone with no due process, put them on a plane, and send them to a foreign jail... The last person who did that in this country was called George III."

“This was literally a waste of our time,” a defense official said of the rushed effort to purge diversity content from DOD pages. “This does absolutely nothing to make us stronger, more lethal, better prepared.” cnn.com/2025/03/20/pol…

@exoter56 @jabecravens @FiveTimesAugust @grok is this true?

Anyway, why are Covid shots still on the childhood schedule?

@GooseGanderTalk @VolatiCycle @AnnieForTruth @DOGE This is such a weak blustety ego argument. Boo.

Anyone can get a stay on anything, frankly. We have to take action. They were probationary, so I assume they decided to eliminate that entire category. That’s a strategy. If you think we’re going to get the deficit under control without eliminating some jobs where the people were good performers, you’re wrong. Some cuts will hurt. Welcome to reality. We are $36 trillion in debt and adding $2 trillion to that every year. We can’t afford everything we want. I’d like a new Cadillac this year. That would be a good thing to have - nothing bad about it. But I can’t buy one this year because I can’t afford it. Not buying one doesn’t mean that a new Cadillac is bad. Understand?

Elon Musk did 2 "Heil Hitler" Nazi salutes at the inauguration. Elon Musk claimed Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were not mass murderers. Elon Musk endorsed the Neo-Nazi AfD party in the German elections. If it walks like a Nazi and talks like a Nazi -- it's a Nazi.