Good morning. It's Wednesday, May 27, and we're covering OpenRouter's $113M round, why AI agents are forcing companies to rebuild workflows, and Sam Altman's case for AI as a utility.

Yesterday's poll results + this week's Real vs AI ↓

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the company increasingly views intelligence as a metered utility, comparing AI access to electricity or water rather than traditional software. Altman said future AI systems could range from lightweight background assistants to models spending “hundreds of millions” or eventually billions of dollars on single problems. He argued limited compute supply risks concentrating access among wealthy users unless providers rapidly expand infrastructure and lower costs.

China expands overseas travel restrictions to top AI researchers at private firms including Alibaba Group and DeepSeek, signaling growing concern over protecting strategic technology talent. Authorities now require some advanced AI workers to obtain government approval before traveling abroad, according to people familiar with the matter. The measures reflect Beijing’s broader push to close the AI gap with the US while tightening oversight of sectors viewed as nationally sensitive.

Sam Altman says AI has not eliminated white-collar jobs as quickly as he once feared, calling earlier concerns about a potential “jobs apocalypse” overstated so far. Speaking at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia conference in Sydney, the OpenAI CEO said the company’s technical predictions proved more accurate than its assumptions about social and economic disruption. Altman said firms including HSBC, Amazon, and Standard Chartered have replaced some roles with AI, though human interaction remains hard to automate.

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Cursor’s Composer 2.5 emerges as a top low-cost coding AI, challenging frontier models with near-equal performance at a fraction of the price.

OpenRouter, a startup that helps companies access and manage hundreds of AI models through a single platform, has raised $113 million in a funding round led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s investment arm. The company is now valued at roughly $1.3 billion, more than double its valuation from 2025.

OpenRouter says it processes 25 trillion AI tokens weekly — up fivefold in six months — as businesses increasingly mix models from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and Tencent to balance performance and cost. CEO Alex Atallah compared the company’s role to Stripe for AI infrastructure, helping customers avoid vendor lock-in while reducing inference expenses as enterprise AI usage accelerates. → Read the full article here. (Paywall)

A new report from MIT Technology Review Insights argues that companies adopting agentic AI will need to redesign core operations rather than simply layer AI tools onto existing workflows. The report found that 85% of organizations want to become “agentic” within three years, but 76% say their infrastructure and processes are not ready for the shift.

Experts from PwC and AI startup Ema say AI agents are changing how work is coordinated, how managers operate, and how success is measured, pushing companies toward system-wide transformation instead of incremental automation. Early deployments in customer service, HR, and sales suggest AI agents could speed up business processes by 30% to 50% while reducing low-value work by up to 40%, though leaders still face unresolved questions around accountability, trust, and workforce redesign. → Read the full article here.

Hugging Face has unveiled LeRobot Humanoid, a $2,500 open-source bipedal robot platform designed for researchers, developers, and hobbyists experimenting with AI-powered robotics. The project includes 3D-printable parts, off-the-shelf hardware specifications, wiring guides, and software tools for both simulation and real-world testing.

Rather than competing with high-end commercial humanoids, the company says the goal is to create an affordable, repairable system that supports rapid experimentation and reproducible robotics research. → Read the full article here.

Ferrari Targets China With EV: Ferrari’s $650K Luce EV divides fans with a radical design as it targets wealthy EV buyers beyond loyal collectors.

AMD Preps Zen 7 Chips: Reports say AMD plans Zen 7 CPUs on TSMC’s A14 node with bigger chiplets and up to 224MB cache.

DuckDuckGo Gains on AI Search Backlash: US installs surged 30% week-over-week after Google's I/O overhaul replaced blue links with an AI agent.

Qualcomm Lands ByteDance AI Deal (Paywall): ByteDance will reportedly buy millions of Qualcomm AI chips for data centers and AI agent software.

Spotify Adds Narrated Articles: Spotify added 650 narrated magazine articles for Premium users, expanding beyond music and podcasts.

Starlink Mini May Add Battery: Firmware leaks suggest SpaceX is testing a Starlink Mini dish with a built-in battery for easier portable use.

Goldman's CEO says AI won't cause mass unemployment. History proves technology always creates more jobs than it destroys.

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes – human adaptability always wins (19%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes, but millions will get hurt in the transition (42%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No – white-collar disruption is categorically different (8%)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ No – the speed of AI breaks every historical pattern (30%)

Thanks for reading. See you next time!

— Matthew Berman, Nick Wentz & the Forward Future Team