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Today’s Menu

• Google Turns Chrome Into an AI Agent

• The Economic Disconnect Nobody's Talking About

Markets

TODAY IN AI

Google Turns Chrome Into an AI Agent

Google just announced a wave of AI upgrades and Gemini integrations into its Chrome browser, including the addition of agentic browsing, built-in image generation, Personal Intelligence, and more.

Auto Browse controls Chrome in its own tab, clicking through sites and completing tasks, also pausing before sensitive actions like payments. Gemini now lives in a persistent sidebar, letting users ask questions, compare products across tabs, and leverage Google apps like Gmail and Calendar.

New Nano Banana integration lets users create images directly in the browser, with Personal Intelligence also coming soon for more personalized answers.

There's been no shortage of AI-first browser competition like OpenAI's Atlas, Perplexity's Comet, Dia, and others over the past year, but adoption has mostly been lacking, leaving Google with the perfect opportunity to simply continue weaving Gemini into its dominant Chrome platform and integrating deeper with its apps.

When Google puts an AI agent directly into Chrome that can click through sites and complete tasks, that's not just a feature. That's turning the world's most-used browser into an autonomous assistant.

TODAY IN CRYPTO

The Economic Disconnect Nobody's Talking About

I had a bit of a come to Jesus moment today, and it was all thanks to four converging factors that hit over the last twenty-four hours: The S&P five hundred hit new all-time highs. Consumer sentiment reached ten-year lows. Raoul Pal laid out his Economic Singularity thesis on our pod. Amazon just laid off sixteen thousand corporate employees due to "rising competition over AI."

Here's how it went down, and the fire-under-my-ass realization that it triggered.

The S&P five hundred hit new all-time highs. Positive earnings from roughly eighty percent of the companies that reported Q4 earnings yesterday resulted in fresh records. Which, on the surface, doesn't feel all that crazy. New S&P highs seem to be hitting every other week in the current climate.

But the disconnect hit when I learned this: Consumer sentiment just reached ten-year lows. That's a decade-low, lower than COVID, in how regular people feel about the economy, while asset prices are printing fresh records.

For years, markets and consumer sentiment moved roughly together. When people felt good, they spent and invested. When they felt bad, markets reflected that anxiety. That's no longer the case.

The average consumer is getting squeezed by persistent inflation and high rates, all while they watch asset markets rip from the sidelines. This creates a two-tier economy where asset owners win and everyone else falls behind.

When the S&P hits all-time highs while consumer sentiment hits decade lows, that's not market strength. That's a wealth gap becoming unbridgeable in real time.

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Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Damon James