This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.
Hundreds of AI tools emerge every week. Ive picked five new ones worth exploring. Theyre free to try, easy to use, and signal new directions for useful AI.
1. Sesame: Talk with a surprisingly lifelike AI
Of all the AI bots Ive communicated with, this one sounds the most lifelike. Pick either Maya or Miles to talk with for free in Sesames conversational demo. Try one of these topics. You can download your conversation afterwards. Its deleted from the companys servers within 30 days to protect your privacy.
Ill keep an eye on this company: Sesame aims to build an ever-present brilliant friend and conversationalist, keeping you informed and organized, helping you be a better version of yourself.
Another intriguing new AI conversationalist: Im also intrigued by my experiments with Natura Umanas AI people. Rather than one AI bot that covers everything, the NatureOS ecosystem hosts multiple conversational bots, each with a different focus. Ive talked with Hector about well-being and Athena about fitness. The NatureOS interestingly includes hardware, so you can summon these lifelike AI characters with a quick tap of special earbuds. (See a video demo.)
2. Convergence: Assign tasks to an AI agent
Ask Convergences AI agent to buy groceries for you, find a gift on Amazon, get you a restaurant reservation, research what people say about your company, or do any number of other tasks. This is just one of many new AI agents trained to use a Web browser for you, and none are yet fully reliable. When I tasked Convergence with making a list of LinkedIn profiles of speakers at the upcoming Perugia International Journalism festival, it got some right and many wrong. With simpler tasks your odds of success are higher. You can request up to five tasks for free per day, or pay $20/month for an unlimited number of tasks.
3. Scribe: Transcribe super accurately
Until April 9, Scribea remarkably accurate new transcription model from ElevenLabsis completely free. In my tests it got the names of websites right, whereas most transcription tools get those wrong. It also captured tiny speech nuances so well that Id recommend this over other tools for anything requiring top accuracy. It works in 99 languages.
4. Google Career Dreamer: Imagine a new job
Dream up potential new directions for your career with this simple, well-designed free site. You dont have to log in, enter your name, or share any personal info. Just type in the kind of work you do and confirm whether you have certain skills and interests. Add your education if you want.
The AI immediately gives you a career identity statement and shows you a map of jobs that might interest you. Hover over any to learn more about them. You can even open up nearby job openings in that field. You can then jump to Gemini, Googles alternative to ChatGPT, to work on a cover letter or continue your career ideation.
Gems are now free You can now create a free Gemini Gem, which is an AI tool customized with your specific instructions and up to 10 documents you upload. Its Googles answer to ChatGPTs Custom GPTs.
Try this: Create a new Career Gem by uploading your resume, past cover letters, career planning docs, and any other relevant materials. Provide instructions if you have a particular style, language, or approach in mind. This new trained AI assistant youve customized can then help you anytime you return to it to refine a cover letter, update your resume, practice for an interview, or even brainstorm career ideas. Alternative: You can use Googles default Career Guide gem without uploading anything, but its not personalized.
5. Adobe Enhance Speech: Improve audio
Adobe recently upgraded its audio cleanup tool. Upload any audio recording with background noise and immediately get a clean version to download. There are new sliders for adjusting the enhancement and background noise.
You can then use Adobe Podcast to edit the cleaned audio by trimming the transcript just as you would in a Google Doc. It now works for recordings in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and English.
If youre making a podcast, you can choose from royalty-free sound collections with intros, outros, transition sounds, and background music. Its free to try for a month and included with existing Adobe subscriptions.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here.
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When I was 12 years old, my parents enrolled me in a kids coding class at the YMCA. This was 1983before the internettyping code from magazines like Compute! into a computer with a green-on-black screen and seeing what it did. And the experience would go on to shape the course of my life.
Ive been in software for more than 30 years, most of them at Intuit. I started there as a software engineer in 1999 and today am its chief technology officer. In that time, so much has changed about this professionfrom the way we mentor to the way we code. Today, agentic AI technology can take high-level directions, look at an existing code base, pull in the right set of data, do a web search to look at the current ecosystem, and then plan out and perform a sequence of actions normally expected from a junior engineer. This provides a true end-to-end done-for-you experience. Put simply, I can see why people might feel like everything is changing for software engineers.
But even in this fast-changing field, there are throughlines. I may not be working in BASIC on the same Apple 2E from coding camp, but the foundational skills that help me break down complex problems, ask the right questions, and code durable solutions are as important as they’ve always been. No one needs me to describe how this industry has changed. Instead, here are three things that havent.
1. The why is as important as the how
Strategic thinking has long been part of a software engineers job, to go beyond coding to building. Working in service of a larger purpose helps engineers develop more impactful solutions than simply coding to a set of specifications. With the rise in AI-assisted codingand, thus, the ability to code and build much fasterthe why remains at the forefront. We drive business impact by delivering measurable customer benefits. And you have to understand a problem before you can solve it with code.
As machines tackle the parts of the job that deliver relatively standard pieces of a solution, the other part of an engineers rolethat of a cognitive architecttakes on new weight. The key differentiator lies in the ability to effectively use AI to augment human capabilities. Time previously spent on routine coding tasks can now be devoted to strategic decisions, allowing engineers who are just starting out to practice critical thinking skills earlier in their careers and offering seasoned engineers more opportunities to leverage their expertise for competitive advantage.
2. Curiosity is key
The best engineers are inherently curious, with an eye for detail and a desire to learn. Through the decades, that hasn’t really changed; a learning mindset continues to be important for technologists at every level. Ive always been curious about what makes things tick. As a child, I remember taking things apart to see how they worked. I knew I wanted to be an engineer when I was able to put them back together again.
The continuous advancement of technology makes it impossible for the day-to-day work of a junior engineer to look the same year over year. In the 1980s, an entry-level coder might have been tasked with writing simple programs in assembly language, but by the 90s this was made nearly obsolete by higher-level languages like C++. Similarly, in the early 2000s, we needed humans to manually parse and clean large files, and by the 2010s we could automate data cleaning with scripting and ETL tools.
AI may be exponentially accelerating the pace of change in our day-to-day work, but those who enter the field with curiosity and a hunger to make things more efficient, effective, and intuitive will continue to find success, even as the way they apply that curiosity continues to shift.
3. Leadership skills arent just for managers
Not every great coder aspires to be a people leader; I certainly didnt. I was introverted growing up. But as I worked my way up at Intuit, I saw firsthand how the right leadership skills could deepen my impact, even when I wasnt charged with leading anybody. I’ve seen how quick decision making, holistic problem solving, and efficient delegation can drive impact at every level of an organization. And these assets only become more important as we fold AI into the process.
Communication skills, for example, have taken on new significance. When we convey all the relevant information needed for a counterpart to provide an adequate responsewhether it’s a colleague, a customer, or AIwe reach better outcomes faster. It’s always been critical to understand the context around a problem in order to choose and code the right solution. But engineers now need to be able to adequately explain that context to AI in a clear, direct way to efficiently delegate portions of their work, in order to leverage AI to operate more efficiently and increase productivity internally. At Intuit, we see up to 40 percent faster coding using generative AI code assistants. Communication skills are key in getting these outcomesand, as a resultdriving faster innovation for customers.
AI is changing the trajectory of software engineering. And as long as we continue to practice the foundational skills our industry was built on, it will be as rewarding and exciting a career in the future as it was for me 30 years ago.
Alex Balazs is CTO at Intuit.
CoreWeave plans to reduce the size of its U.S. initial public offering and price its shares below the indicated range, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday, dampening expectations that the listing would boost investor appetite for IPOs.
The Nvidia-backed cloud services provider is now looking to sell 37.5 million shares, 23.5% less than originally planned, and price them at $40 apiece, well below even the low end of the indicated range, the source added, requesting anonymity discussing confidential information.
Nvidia will anchor the CoreWeave IPO at the price with a $250 million order, the source said. The sale would raise about $1.5 billion and value CoreWeave at about $23 billion on a fully diluted basis, according to Reuters’ calculations.
The company did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment. It is expected to price the IPO later on Thursday.
CoreWeaves roadshow, which began last week, received a weaker-than-expected reception as risk-averse investors in a volatile market weighed concerns over the companys long-term growth, financial risks and capital intensity, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
Among the concerns is CoreWeaves heavy reliance on Microsoft, whose shifting AI datacenter strategy could impact long-term demand for chips known as graphics processing units, or GPUs. While investors appear comfortable with the companys high leverage since it has strong free cash flow, the risk of commitments not being fulfilled remains a worry.
Additionally, CoreWeave’s capital-intensive business model raises questions about sustainability, adding to broader market uncertainty.
CoreWeave has been a significant customer for Nvidia, deploying over 250,000 of Nvidia’s GPUs by the end of 2024. Investors’ lukewarm reception to the CoreWeave IPO could signal reduced confidence in the AI infrastructure market, as the scaling of GPU assets in AI training slows down.
“The business model doesn’t appear fundamentally flawed, but this suggests investors are recalibrating AI infrastructure valuations,” said Lukas Muehlbauer, research analyst at IPOX.
CoreWeave and some existing investors had initially aimed to sell 49 million shares in the offering priced between $47 and $55 each to raise as much as $2.7 billion. That would have valued the company at up to $32 billion on a fully diluted basis.
Mounting concerns
CoreWeave’s stock market debut has been closely watched as a test of the strength of a recovery in the U.S. IPO market and whether investor enthusiasm for AI newcomers remains strong or has started to wane.
The number of U.S.-listed equity capital markets deals, including both IPOs and block trades of shares, fell to 187 in the first three months of this year, down from 243 during the same period last year, according to Dealogic data through Wednesday. The total value of these transactions also dipped, falling from $74.02 billion to $63.48 billion.
Despite the AI boom, there are growing concerns that data center spending will be uneven, with investments concentrated among a few giants while others struggle to keep pace.
DeepSeek, China’s low-cost AI rival, has also emerged as a growing threat, fueling concerns about pressure on data center spending.
CoreWeave had debt of about $8 billion as of last year. It also leases its 32 data centers and some equipment, instead of owning them, resulting in operating lease liabilities of $2.6 billion.
In its offering filing, the company had said about $1 billion of the IPO proceeds would be used to pay down debt. The company has said it would continue to borrow.
CoreWeave has yet to turn a profit, and IPO investors in the last few years have been wary of backing companies with no history of profitability.
Ahead of its IPO, CoreWeave secured partnerships with major AI players, including Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Earlier this month, it signed an $11.9 billion infrastructure deal with the ChatGPT maker.
The cloud services provider, which offers access to data centers and high-powered Nvidia chips for AI workloads, will also issue $350 million in shares to OpenAI through a private placement as part of the offering.
Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the lead underwriters of the IPO.
The downsizing was first reported by Semafor on Thursday.
Echo Wang, Krystal Hu, Milana Vinn, Manya Saini, Niket Nishant, and Ateev Bhandari, Reuters
As the global auto world reeled from the potential fallout of Donald Trump‘s new auto tariffs, one name stood out as less affected than otherselectric-vehicle maker Tesla.
The Texas-based company’s shares were the rare automotive stock to trade in the green in U.S. action, as analysts said Tesla’s supply chain and financial performance may not be affected by the wide-ranging levies that will affect global shipments of both cars and car parts to the United States, mainly due to the company’s largely domestic production.
Still, that relief in the United States, where Elon Musk has become one of President Trump’s primary advisers, tasked with swiftly cutting federal spending, may not improve the brand’s reputation worldwide.
Tesla shares have plunged more than 40% since peaking in mid-December as a protest movement against the EV company has erupted in the U.S. and around the world as the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency has drawn heavy criticism for going after federal workers. The stock was up about 2% on Thursday.
The 25% tariffs are expected to disrupt the global automotive industry, raise the cost of vehicles in the United States, and pinch automakers’ earnings. Shares of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler-parent Stellantis were down between 2.1% and 7%.
While Tesla does import some parts from around the world, the company largely produces its vehicles in the United States. Analysts expect Tesla to report deliveries of about 398,000 vehicles when it reports figures for the first quarter next week, according to 20 analysts polled by Visible Alpha.
Trump said the duties announced on Wednesday could be net neutral or even good for Tesla, adding that his close ally Musk did not advise him regarding auto tariffs.
Several administration officials have defended Tesla in public comments in recent days, ranging from urging people to buy its stock to opening investigations into vandalism at Tesla dealerships.
Still, Musk late on Wednesday said, “To be clear, this will affect the price of parts in Tesla cars that come from other countries. The cost impact is not trivial.”
Tesla imports lithium-ion batteries from China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd and other automotive parts from countries such as South Korea, Japan and Mexico, according to import filing data through the end of February provided to Reuters by ImportYeti.
Car prices could rise by $5,000 to $15,000 if a 25% tariff on imported cars is maintained, according to Goldman Sachs.
Automakers are likely to pass on the impact of tariffs to customers by raising prices, and that could close the price gap between Tesla’s electric vehicles and competing gas-powered cars, analysts said.
“Tesla is a relative beneficiary given 100% U.S. production footprint, substantial U.S. sourcing and with Model Y competing in a midsize crossover segment where close to ~50% of vehicles could be subject to tariffs,” TD Cowen analysts said in a note.
While Trump’s tariffs may benefit Tesla in the United States, the automaker faces mounting challenges in Europe and Canada, where political sentiment and reduced electric vehicle incentives are eroding its competitive position.
In Britain and the European Union, Tesla is grappling with policy headwinds and shrinking subsidies that threaten to dampen demand and slow its growth trajectory. Canada has frozen a rebate program for Teslas.
“Musk’s involvement with Trump might be a factor weighing on sales outlook outside of the United States,” Sandeep Rao, senior researcher at Leverage Shares, said.
Akash Sriram, Arsheeya Bajwa and Richa Naidu, Reuters
Trading platform Robinhood, best known for introducing a new generation of traders to the stock market, crypto, and ETFs, is growing up alongside its customers, moving one step closer to becoming a full financial service company the likes of Fidelity or Charles Schwab.
On Wednesday, the digital brokerage announced plans to launch Robinhood Banking this fall, a one-stop service that provides traditional checking and savings accounts with luxury benefits, as well as Robinhood Strategies, a wealth management product.
Customers will need a Gold subscription, which runs $5 a month or $50 a year, to open those individual and joint checking accounts, which will allow users “to send money across the world in over 100 currencies, and even get cash delivered directly to you” (more on that below).
Robinhood’s new financial products will include new tools for wealth-management, AI-powered investment advice, access to tax advisors, estate planning, and instant transfers between Robinhood accounts and FDIC partner institutions for up to $2.5 million. Robinhood said the idea is to give members “access to financial services such as private wealth management and private banking, which were once thought out of reach to many.”
But perhaps the most unique perk offered is that customers will be able to have cash delivered to their door same-day, likely as a way to continue to capture younger investors with their smartphones. (Robinhood’s median customer age is now 35, up from 31 five years ago.) Cash deliveries would work similarly to, say, DoorDash, serving up cash instead of food.
Other unconventional perks for new banking customers reportedly include discounted helicopter rides.
Our goal is for Robinhood to give you a world-class financial team in your pocket, with cutting-edge tools you cant find elsewhere, Vlad Tenev, Robinhood’s chairman said in a statement.
Robinhood said in the statement that it would charge Gold members 0.25% annually on managed individual and retirement accounts up to $100,000, with a yearly cap of $250, “which means free management on every dollar over $100k and an effective management fee of 0.1% for portfolios with $250,000 or 0.05% for those with $500,000.”
Unlike Robinhood Banking, Robinhood Strategies is already available to all Robinhood Gold members, and will begin rolling out to all customers in April, according to the company’s press release.
Shares of GameStop fell more than 15% on Thursday after the company’s plan to finance its bitcoin pivot raised questions about the timing of its move and its strategy to turn around its struggling retail business.
The video game retailer’s shares also gave up all their gains from a day earlier and were on track for their biggest one-day fall since last June, after the company said it was offering $1.3 billion in 0% 2030 convertible bonds to amass the cryptocurrency.
The company’s announcement that it would buy bitcoin to hold as a treasury reserve asset had created a mini euphoria among retail traders, who keenly track the so-called “meme stock.”
However, GameStop also announced the closing of a “significant number” of additional stores this year, signalling that its retail business continued to flounder despite attempts to turn it around.
“Investors are not necessarily optimistic on the underlying business,” said Bret Kenwell, U.S. investment analyst at eToro.
“There are question marks with GameStop’s model. If bitcoin is going to be the pivot, where does that leave everything else?”
The timing of GameStop’s decision to buy bitcoin is also in focus as the cryptocurrency’s price has gained nearly 27% since November’s presidential election, though they are sharply down from record highs due to uncertain economic conditions.
“Why did (GameStop) wait so long if they were going to go down this road? Six months ago, nine months ago would have made a lot more sense,” Kenwell said.
The debt offering to fund bitcoin purchases mimics the playbook of Strategy, one of the largest individual holders of bitcoin that is widely seen as a bitcoin proxy.
The overall outlook for crypto markets was also contributing to declines as GameStop’s move has “failed to meaningfully boost market confidence,” said Agne Linge, head of growth at decentralized bank WeFi.
With the day’s losses, GameStop shares have dropped more than 23% this year.
Lisa Pauline Mattackal, Reuters
X owner Elon Musk was privately messaging with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman while also putting public pressure on the social media company’s content moderation efforts, The Verge reported Thursday.
Two months ago, several Reddit subreddits started to block links to X in protest of Musk appearing to give the Nazi salute. Musk called the efforts “insane,” while a Reddit spokesperson at the time clarified that Reddit itself wasn’t imposing a ban on the links. A few days later, Musk claimed that Reddit users who were calling for violence against members of his Department of Government Efficiency were breaking the law.
Musk has been a vocal critic of content moderation on social platformsparticularly since buying Twitter, now X, in 2022to where he’s rolled back many trust and safety policies. At the same time, unironically, he’s been known to restrict links to other platforms on X.
And this certainly isnt the first time Musk has gone after criticsjournalists, users, even employees. Last month, Musk reportedly fired a Tesla manager who criticized Musk for a social media post that used the names of Nazis as wordplay.
The Verge reported that “shortly after” Musk and Huffman talked, Reddit enacted its 72-hour ban on the r/WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit, saying it was “due to a prevalence of violent content.” Reddit also fully banned a subreddit called r/IsElonDeadYet for breaking rules “against posting violent content.”
The r/WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit, which has more than three million followers, is mostly made up of users screenshotting posts from Bluesky and X. The r/IsElonDeadYet page consisted of a daily post asking whether he was, in fact, dead or not, according to an archived version of the site in December.
Reddit moderators learned that the two leaders had spoken, according to The Verge, and discussed it. In response to a user who said Musk is allowed to call out death threats, another reportedly said: “Oh, I dont have any problem with removing rule-breaking content (and taking the respective admin action on said accounts), but I find it a bit problematic that hes able to exert influence on both public and private institutions.”
Reddit has had ongoing tension with moderators and power usersespecially after a policy change requiring some third-party developers to pay much more for its application programming interface led to widespread protests in mid-2023. The company, which went public last year, has struggled to maintain balance between changes from its leadership team and its hundreds of millions of monthly global users.
In a major overhaul, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will lay off 10,000 workers and shut down entire agencies, including ones that oversee billions of dollars in funds for addiction services and community health centers across the country.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient sprawling bureaucracy in a video announcing the restructuring Thursday. He faulted the department’s 82,000 workers for a decline in Americans’ health.
I want to promise you now that we’re going to do more with less, Kennedy said in the video, posted to social media.
The restructuring plan caps weeks of tumult at the nations top health department, which has been embroiled in rumors of mass firings, the revocation of $11 billion in public health funding for cities and counties, a tepid response to a measles outbreak, and controversial remarks about vaccines from its new leader.
Still, Kennedy said a painful period lies ahead for HHS, which is responsible for monitoring infectious diseases, inspecting foods and hospitals and overseeing health insurance programs for nearly half the country.
Overall, the department will downsize to 62,000 positions, losing nearly a quarter of its staff 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers encouraged by President Donald Trumps administration.
The cuts were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Public health experts, doctors, current and former HHS workers and congressional Democrats quickly panned Kennedys plans, warning they could have untold consequences for millions of people across the country.
These staff cuts endanger public health and food safety, said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, in a statement. They raise serious concerns that the administrations pledge to make Americans healthy again could become nothing more than an empty promise.
But Kennedy, in announcing the restructuring, blasted HHS for failing to improve Americans lifespans and not doing enough to drive down chronic disease and cancer rates.
All of that money, Kennedy said of the department’s $1.7 trillion yearly budget, has failed to improve the health of Americans.
Cancer death rates have dropped 34% over the past two decades, translating to 4.5 million deaths avoided, according to the American Cancer Society. Thats largely due to smoking cessation, the development of better treatments many funded by the National Institutes of Health, including groundbreaking immunotherapy and earlier detection.
Federal health workers stationed across the country at agencies including the NIH and the Food and Drug Administration, both in Maryland described shock, fear and anxiety rippling through their offices Thursday. Workers were not given advance notice of the cuts, several told The Associated Press, and many remained uncertain about whether their jobs were on the chopping block.
Its incredibly difficult and frustrating and upsetting to not really know where we stand while were trying to keep doing the work,” said an FDA staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “Were being villainized and handicapped and have this guillotine just hanging over our necks.
HHS provided on Thursday a breakdown of cuts at the FDA, the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:
3,500 jobs at the FDA, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods.
2,400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide.
1,200 jobs at the NIH, the worlds leading public health research arm.
300 jobs at CMS, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.
HHS said it anticipates the changes will save $1.8 billion per year but didn’t give a breakdown or any other details.
The cuts and consolidation go far deeper than anyone expected, an NIH employee said.
Were all pretty devastated, said the staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. We dont know what this means for public health.
Union leaders for CDC workers in Atlanta said they received notice from HHS on Thursday morning that reductions will primarily focus on administrative positions including human resources, finance, procurement and information technology.
At CMS, where cuts focus on workers who troubleshoot problems that arise for Medicare beneficiaries and Affordable Care Act enrollees, the result will be the lowest customer service standards for thousands of cases, said Jeffrey Grant, a former deputy director at the agency who resigned last month.
Beyond losing workers, Kennedy said he will shut down entire agencies, some of which were established by Congress decades ago. Several will be folded into a new Administration for a Healthy America, he said.
Those include the Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees and provides funding for hundreds of community health centers around the country, as well as the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which funds clinics and oversees the national 988 hotline. Both agencies pump billions of dollars into on-the-ground work in local communities.
SAMHSA was created by Congress in 1992, so closing it is illegal and raises questions about Kennedy’s commitment to treating addiction and mental health, said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University addiction researcher.
Burying the agency in an administrative blob with no clear purpose is not the way to highlight the problem or coordinate a response, Humphreys said.
The new Administration for Healthy America will focus on maternal and child health, environmental health and HIV/AIDS work, HHS said.
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, created by a law signed by then-Republican President George W. Bush and responsible for maintaining the national stockpile that was quickly drained during the COVID-19 pandemic, will also be eliminated and moved into the CDC.
Amanda Seitz, Associated Press
Associated Press writers Matthew Perrone, Lauran Neergaard, JoNel Aleccia, Carla K. Johnson, and Mike Stobbe contributed to this report.
Smartphones have been around long enough that, to the casual observer, their designs seem to have hit a plateau. And on a functional level, thats more or less truewere all essentially holding the same six-inch-ish rectangle, aside from the occasional foldable exception.
But the maturity and ubiquity of smartphones have sparked a new phenomenon: the return of trends in cycles, much like fashion. For example, most phones released in the past few years have flat sides, like the iPhone 4 from 2010. Five years ago, almost all those sides would have been curved. Flat edges arent a new inventiontheyre just whats trending again.
But this year brings a surprising twist, something many thought unlikely to return: For the first time in a while, major phone makers are prioritizing thinness.
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Samsung kicked off the year by announcing its Galaxy S25 lineup, which includes a slimline model, the Galaxy S25 Edge. Bloombergs Mark Gurman has reported that Apple is planning a thinner 2025 iPhone said to feature a single camera. And smaller brands like Tecno showed off unusually thin phones at last months Mobile World Congress.
So, why now?
Around a decade ago, it was common for companies to boast about how thin their phones were. Heres the real magic, said Apples Phil Schiller when introducing the larger screens in 2014s 6.9mm-thick iPhone 6. Thinner than any phones weve ever madethat took an incredible amount of engineering. A few months later, Oppo announced its R5 phone, which came in at a record-breaking 4.85mm.
A Samsung Galaxy Edge smartphone next to the Samsung Galaxy 23 and Samsung Galaxy 24 smartphones at the Galaxy Unpacked event in San Jose, on Wednesday, January 22, 2025. [Photo: Michaela Vatcheva/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Back then, it seemed inevitable that phones would just keep getting thinner. But then something curious happened: The iPhone 6S got thicker, bumping up to 7.1mm and switching to a stronger aluminum alloy. It was an unofficial but obvious response to the iPhone 6s tendency to bend. (It happened to me.)
No one complained much about the iPhone 6S’s structural integrity, but iPhones kept getting thicker, topping out at the 8.3mm we see with the current iPhone 16 Pro. By and large, people havent seemed to mind. Battery life is much less of a concern than it used to be, and todays increasingly large camera hardware simply wouldnt fit in thinner devices.
The 2025 flurry of deliberately thin phones, then, is a clear break from recent trends. So why are manufacturers converging on the same idea?
The primary answer may be technical. While we dont yet know what Samsung or Apple are using in their upcoming devices, silicon-carbon batteries have become increasingly common in Chinese Android phones over the past year. Infusing silicon into the battery chemistry can provide a meaningful increase in capacity within the same volume.
Oppos latest Find N5 folding phone, for example, is just 4.2mm thick when unfoldedbarely thick enough to accommodate a USB-C port. But its 5,600mAh silicon-carbide battery represents a 17% increase in capacity over its predecessor, the Find N3, even though that phone was 38% thicker. Other companies like Xiaomi and Vivo have used the tech to similar ends.
The other reason thinner phones might take off is more subjective. When was the last time a new phone truly wowed you? There will clearly be trade-offs in battery life and performance with a significantly thinner device. But if you finish each day with more than half a charge, or if you rarely use your telephoto lens, its plausible you might prefer a slimmer, more attractive handset.
Combine better battery technology with the fact that most people dont need flagship-level performance, and suddenly a slim phone with few compromises seems pretty reasonable. It makes sense for companies to carve out space for design-forward devices in their lineups. Samsung has always been willing to experiment; and while Apple tends to be more conservative, its reportedly unimpressed with sales of its mid-tier Plus-not-Pro iPhones. Why not try something more distinctive between the entry level and the high end?
If anything, the question is whether these designs will go far enough. Samsung has yet to announce the Galaxy S25 Edges specs or let anyone in the media handle it, but I saw it suspended in the air at Mobile World Congress and wasnt particularly blown away by its dimensions. Bloombergs Gurman has suggested the upcoming slim iPhone will be about 2mm thinner than an iPhone 16 Pro, putting it around 6.3mmmore in line with the iPhone 6 than todays thicker models.
Maybe thats the right tradeoff. The goal here should be to create something like the MacBook Air of phones: impressive design with unspectacular specs that are good enough for most use cases. The Pro models can continue to be for people who really need them.
Plenty of people will always want the most performant phone with the biggest battery and best cameras, of course. But when a phones selling point is its physical form, it cant really be judged until you pick it up for yourselfand then find out how long its battery lasts.
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Beverly Hills hottest club is California Pizza Kitchen.
At least, thats what someone unfamiliar with the brand might have taken away from its new rebrand, which debuted on Monday. On its website, California Pizza Kitchen replaced its friendly yellow logo and wordmark with a silver chrome logo and the shortened name CPK.
[Photo: courtesy California Pizza Kitchen]
Meanwhile, on socials, the brand posted several videos of its new identity that looked more fit for promoting a rave than a family friendly pizza restaurant. Shots of flashing lights, serious models, and slogans like DEVOUR THE DOUBTERS and Fresh. To. Death were cut with clips of harshly-lit pizzas and interspersed with the brands new all-caps wordmark.
At first glance, one might have assumed these were assets for a new Liquid Death campaign or MSCHF launch. Many commenters on CPKs socials were quick to question what was going on with the brand, including the official Little Caesers account, which commented, Bestie whats happening on a particularly odd video. But, as it turns out, the whole edgelord rebrand was just a temporary marketing play to promote California Pizza Kitchens 40th anniversary. The restaurant just revealed the hoax through a partnership with actress Busy Phillips and restored its platforms to its original branding.
The campaign shows that, amidst an influx of purposefully shocking brand moves like Jaguars totally unrecognizable rebrand or Duolingos decision to briefly kill off its mascot, weve reached a new stage of the trend cycle: full brand-on-brand parody.
CPK’s midlife crisis
Dawn Keller joined California Pizza Kitchens as its CMO about a year ago. Since then, she says, shes learned that sentiment around the brand is overwhelmingly positive, given that many customers associate it with years of childhood dinners. The issue, though, is that many fans just dont think about CPK that often, Keller says.
Part of the problem is that the restaurant hasnt made much of an investment in its marketing efforts to keep CPK top of mind. On socials, it has a staid strategy of essentially reposting traditional ad materialsan approach thats less than ideal in a social media landscape that rewards brands who embrace big personalities and brain rot content. So, CPK decided to use the four decade milestone as an opportunity to shake things up by staging a midlife crisis.
[Photo: courtesy California Pizza Kitchen]
Leading up to the campaign, CPK conducted extensive brand research with its creative agency, Iris Worldwide, to decide how the company might grab consumers attention. That work led them to the conclusion that their existing brand positioning and visual identity was strong enough to exclude the possibility of an actual rebrand. Instead, Keller says, the 40-year anniversary campaign riffs on the tendency of other mature brands to go into panic mode and debut a rebrand that loses touch with their original purpose.
We were never of the opinion that we had to upend the apple cart and totally rebrand, Keller says. It was really more about, How do we rejuvenate this brand, amplify it, but do it in a fresher way than we’ve done? [. . .] There was a bit of parody that we were doing, knowing that some brands evolve, and it’s great, but some, you feel like they jump the shark.
[Photo: courtesy California Pizza Kitchen]
While CPKs hypebeast look only lasted for a week, Keller says the intention of the move was to usher the brand into a more adventurous, culturally relevant marketing era on social media.
For CPK, the marketing stunt surfaces an interesting tension between embracing a decades-old existing brand identity and parodying shock-value rebrands, while, at the same time, essentially benefitting from the shock-value strategy itself. Today, even brands who don’t actively embody what Fast Company has termed “DGAF branding” might still have to play into it to succeed online. Thus far, the fake rebrand has resulted in 21 million social impressions for CPK.
[Photo: courtesy California Pizza Kitchen]
It’s also yielded a mixed bag of responses. Keller says her team was expecting some confusion and backlash, both of which have been proven out. Whats surprised them, though, is that many fans actually liked the new look.
You’ve got literally people who were giving it a thumbs up and supported it, Keller says. Maybe that’s the minority, but even to see people with positive reactions to the fake brand really made us laugh. I think it goes back to that brand equity that CPK has, which is, people want CPK to win. They really do. They love it. A lot of people grew up with it. Even when we do something that iscome onobjectively preposterous, they’re still celebrating it.
