Patrick Kulp
Verified
As seen in:
Morning Brew,
Tech Brew,
Aol,
Mashable,
Yahoo Finance,
Adweek,
Fortune,
France 24,
Flipboard,
Yahoo,
NewsBreak,
The Daily Nexus
and
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Patrick Kulp
This AI safety org is tracking how each AI model ‘cheats’ on tasks Original
As AI agents get smarter, they’re also getting wilier. A series of recent security incidents involving “rogue” AI agents have shown how they can cheat, hack, or otherwise misbehave in pursuit of their evaluation objectives.
Bill Gross's Idealab offers aspiring founders 1.2 million startup ideas
Bill Gross has spent decades helping founders build startups. Now he’s imparted some of that knowledge to an AI platform. The serial entrepreneur and founder of the long-running Idealab incubator is rolling out a new platform containing 1.2 million AI-generated business ideas.
Meta looks to expand Muse with AI tools for small businesses
Meta’s plushy new homunculus wants to pull up a chair in your office. As the Muse personal agent/cartoon mascot gains traction among consumers, Meta is also making a play for the crowded enterprise agent market. Meta has hired former MongoDB CEO Chirantan “CJ” Desai to build out a new enterprise platform, as the company looks to provide services beyond advertising tools.
Sizing up Meta’s push into the crowded world of enterprise AI Original
Meta’s plushy new homunculus wants to pull up a chair in your office. As the Muse personal agent/cartoon mascot gains traction among consumers, Meta is also making a play for the crowded enterprise agent market. Meta has hired former MongoDB CEO Chirantan “CJ” Desai to build out a new enterprise platform, as the company looks to provide services beyond advertising tools.
Microsoft’s AI pitch to SMBs runs through its partners
When she’s not selling small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) on Microsoft’s AI tools, Allison West Hughes might be testing them out at the construction business she co-owns with her husband. As Microsoft’s corporate VP of global SMBs, firsthand experience like building work schedules for large projects can help her understand the needs of other customers using Copilot’s SMB tier.
What it’s like to work in tech’s hottest new role Original
Thomas Baucom is friendly and unassuming, for someone who holds what’s been hailed as the “hottest job in tech.” He’s a forward-deployed engineer (FDE) at Superhuman, the company formerly known as Grammarly, where he embeds with clients like universities and large companies to solve their specific problems using customized coding and product fixes. His title was virtually nonexistent before last year, and now it’s everywhere.
What Google's AI and cloud services team has to offer entrepreneurs
When it comes to picking AI tools, tech startups can look to leading models from frontier companies, or a cloud and enterprise stack from a tech giant. Google’s pitch to them is that it offers both, according to Darren Mowry, VP of global startups and investor ecosystem at Google Cloud.
Understanding OpenAI's collection of tools for small businesses
The world’s biggest private startup is turning its eye to small businesses. OpenAI’s newly formed small and medium-sized business team has rolled out a new starter pack of partner plug-ins meant to help founders begin using AI for their businesses. The collection spans prebuilt workflows and skills around payroll, sales, and bookkeeping from the likes of HubSpot, fintech company Mercury, small business-focused CRM HoneyBook, and HR platform Gusto.
How to catch and kill a rogue agent
Your AI strategy has a security problem: 43% of IT leaders now cite security concerns as the top barrier to expanding AI agent deployment, according to research from JumpCloud. Before giving agents more access to apps, data, and workflows, make sure you can govern the identities behind them. See how to secure every identity, human or not. Before a business like a consultancy or consumer mortgage lender rolls out a new agentic system, they might turn to Scale AI to try to break it.
How the CRO job is changing in the agentic AI era
Around a year and a half ago, Jeff Santelices, chief revenue officer at response management platform Responsive, didn’t think much of AI’s potential in sales. Sure, it could whip up some automated outreach emails, but “sales is sales, and it’s all about engaging with people,” he said. That view changed as he started to see agents take on prep tasks like tiering and prioritizing accounts, researching org charts, and spitting out sales hypotheses.
How do AI options stack up for small businesses?
For founders of small businesses or startups, decisions about which AI models to tap or how to best use them can be daunting. It’s a fast-changing and competitive new technology in which token prices and model leaderboard rankings change almost by the week. Most small businesses now use AI in some way, according to various recent surveys, but whether or not they are getting the most out of the technology seems harder to pin down.
Monday.com’s CRO on how AI is transforming the company
Casey George has some pressing items on his Monday.com board: bringing more big businesses to the platform, revamping the way his team sells with AI, and helping guide the company through a period of flux for workplace software. The workflow platform’s chief revenue officer joined mid-2025, and his tenure has been marked with major changes: Last month, Monday laid off 20% of its workforce, or 630 employees, in a bid to refocus on AI, though George said his revenue team came out largely unscathed.
Companies kick the tires on open-weight models amid AI cost crunches Original
For the last year or so, Fitz Nowlan watched with interest as Chinese open-weight models narrowed the performance gap against those offered by big-name labs. The VP of AI and architecture for IT software company SmartBear, Nowlan said there are big potential draws to these free-to-download models, like Z.ai’s GLM-5 or DeepSeek v4: cost-efficiency, lower latency, and avoiding the risk that a lab could create a competing software product.
Putting agentic AI to work
|
“Agentic AI” has emerged as another buzzword that executives and marketers love to toss around. If you believe the hype, a swarm of ultra-smart AI agents will soon take over virtually every enterprise workflow, from cybersecurity to accounting, freeing up humans to concentrate on what really matters: new features, better revenue models, and brewing the perfect cup of coffee in the office kitchen. But are AI agents truly ready for primetime?
By Caroline Nihill Verified, Brianna Monsanto Verified, Eoin Higgins Verified, Patrick Kulp Verified
|
IT Brew
Verified
A new industry group wants to standardize the value of AI
Whether token-maxxing or token-scrimping, it seems everyone in the industry would like clarity on what exactly a token is worth. Companies like JPMorganChase, Accenture, Oracle, SAP, IBM, and many others have signed onto Linux Foundation’s new effort to create standards and best practices around assessing the cost and value of AI. The Tokenomics Foundation’s debut comes after months of evolving business attitudes toward AI spending.
AI agents are making vendor switching messier Original
When ChatGPT first spurred a run on enterprise AI licenses, Emmanuel Frenehard resisted the peer pressure. Frenehard, the chief digital officer at pharmaceutical company Sanofi, said he didn’t want to get locked into contracts that would ingest the company’s lifeblood data. And Microsoft Copilot didn’t seem like much of a productivity boon for the cost at the time.
A new industry group wants to standardize the value of AI
Whether token-maxxing or token-scrimping, it seems everyone in the industry would like clarity on what exactly a token is worth. Companies like JPMorganChase, Accenture, Oracle, SAP, IBM, and many others have signed onto Linux Foundation’s new effort to create standards and best practices around assessing the cost and value of AI. The Tokenomics Foundation’s debut comes after months of evolving business attitudes toward AI spending.
Researchers turn to AI to decipher a devastating neurological condition
For individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the diagnostic journey is typically a harrowing and expensive year-plus ordeal involving at least three healthcare professionals. ALS, a fatal condition with few options for treatment, slowly robs patients of their ability to move and communicate. Diagnosing the condition can be extremely difficult, according to the ALS Association, a nonprofit group that supports ALS research.
IT Brew | IT Industry News & Trends
How AI ideas are stretching IT budgets. July 27, 2026 View Online | Sign Up | Shop It’s Monday! On this day 160 years ago, a ship finished laying an undersea telegraph line between Ireland and Newfoundland. This allowed communication of roughly eight words a minute—or abou how long it takes you to type an email when you’re working from home and holding a baby, coffee, and cat.
How to validate a product idea before you write a single line of code
Inspiration has struck—you’ve got a startup idea, and it’s a good one. Now it’s time to ask the question that takes your concept from pet project to money-making business: “Is this something people need?” Before you write a line of code—or ask someone to write a check—part of the pre-launch process involves seeking assurance that the problem you’re addressing is widespread and the way you’re approaching it is the best possible solution.
Google exec says link lists aren’t going away as search transforms
In recent months, AI has fundamentally changed what it means to google something—and the transformation isn’t done. The search engine made a slew of announcements at its developer conference earlier this year that included the first change to the search box in a quarter century. The upshot is a more AI-centric experience with options for news alert-style information agents that automatically scour the web for you.
Snowflake’s Amy Kodl on how AI changed the data platform’s revenue workflow
For the first months of the year, the share price of data platform Snowflake foundered as investors soured on a slew of workplace software stocks. Then, after its most recent earnings report, the company’s stock surged 36% in one day, where it’s more or less stayed in the weeks since. Amy Kodl, Snowflake’s SVP of worldwide alliances and channels, said the moment was a reminder that AI is still only as good as the data supporting it.
IT leaders face budget pressure as AI spending grows Original
It was the splurgiest of times, it was the thriftiest of times—both can be true of IT budgets right now, depending on the price tag attached to every exec’s favorite two-letter buzzword. While some companies are starting to get sticker shock from all their AI spending, investment in the technology continues to be a top priority for IT leaders. That means fewer resources left for more quotidian line items like infrastructure maintenance or legacy software contracts.
Abridge lays out road map for all-in-one clinical platform
Having secured a spot at the sides of doctors everywhere, Abridge is now aiming to do more than simply take notes on their conversations. In fact, the $5.3 billion-valued startup’s ambitions extend beyond clinical settings alone to insurers and drugmakers. It wants to become a platform that connects these three nodes of the healthcare industry, supporting clinical decisions, suggesting billing codes, and flagging patients for potential pharmaceutical trials.
How will AI tools be priced in a post-tokenmaxxing world?
With astronomical computing bills stacking up, a spendthrift era of “tokenmaxxing” is giving way to a more frugal mindset among companies building AI systems. Taking a cue from this trend, workflow software platform Pegasystems will soon roll out a new pricing model that eliminates token-based rates in favor of a flat charge per resolved case.
Reports show revenue teams still face AI limitations
Execs might harbor ambitions of winnowing sales staff and automating the entire deals pipeline with AI. But the reality inside revenue teams doesn’t quite measure up. That was a theme of two reports this month from sales tech companies. In one, revenue platform Gong analyzed B2B sales conversations and 33.5 million deals between February 2024 and February 2026, and concluded that the data doesn’t support the narrative that AI is replacing human jobs.
Health providers, look for these 'red flags' in AI pitches
Doctors and hospitals have no shortage of AI vendors vying for their attention—and budgets—these days. But how can providers sift through all the noise to select tools that will actually be meaningful for their work and their patients? And when should hospital systems opt to build their own tech rather than buying it? A panel of healthcare professionals considered those questions and more at a New York Tech Week event a few blocks west of one of Manhattan’s hospital rows.
Early-stage founders share the ups and downs of building a company
New York’s Tech Week is full of events where execs boast about dizzying growth and AI revolutions. At a convening of early-stage founders near the top of One World Trade last week, the stated goal was to air a more honest accounting of the trials and troubles of getting a new tech company off the ground.
Why these small business founders say a strategic tech stack is critical for success
New York’s Tech Week is full of events where execs boast about dizzying growth and AI revolutions. At a convening of early-stage founders near the top of One World Trade last week, the stated goal was to air a more honest accounting of the trials and troubles of getting a new tech company off the ground.
How safe are chatbots for health data? It’s hard to know.
Each week, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself. Between AI labs putting the healthcare industry in their sights and ChatGPT joining WebMD as a go-to for health anxiety, chatbots are digesting an increasing amount of sensitive personal health information. But just how safe are these platforms in terms of data privacy? And what do providers using these systems need to know about inputting sensitive data?
AI video platforms aim to overhaul creative workflows
Video produced by AI was once a novelty—sometimes impressive, but more often populated with off-putting human distortions and spectral graphics. But in the last year or so, rapid technological progress and new professional workflow tools have made video AI much more useful, experts told us—and finally able to yield output good enough for, say, a Carl’s Jr. TV spot.
How this startup helps retailers navigate supply chain chaos
The AI supply chain startup Altana was formed in early 2019 around a forecast of global chaos. As part of an early exercise, the three co-founders each traced out what they thought trade would look like in the next few years. “We all wrote some version of, like, the world is gonna fall apart,” CEO and co-founder Evan Smith told us, specifically recalling predictions of more trade wars spurred by the economic rise of China, climate dislocation, and sovereign debt crises.
How this startup helps retailers navigate supply chain chaos
The AI supply chain startup Altana was formed in early 2019 around a forecast of global chaos. As part of an early exercise, the three co-founders each traced out what they thought trade would look like in the next few years. “We all wrote some version of, like, the world is gonna fall apart,” CEO and co-founder Evan Smith told us, specifically recalling predictions of more trade wars spurred by the economic rise of China, climate dislocation, and sovereign debt crises.
Altman claims Musk wanted “total control”
TL;DR: It was Sam Altman’s turn on the stand in Silicon Valley’s hottest new legal drama, Musk vs. Altman, yesterday. The OpenAI CEO claimed that Elon Musk was fine with OpenAI becoming a for-profit—as long as Musk had “total control.” Musk’s lawyers sought to paint Altman as a habitual liar who may have misled the Senate about his own equity stake in the company. The defense continues today, with closing arguments expected tomorrow.
Your Tech Stack: How these execs decide what’s worth paying for
Editor’s note: Welcome to the first installment in Your Tech Stack, an occasional series about, well, your tech stack. How do you build it? Should you go with an all-in-one provider or take a mix-and-match approach? What’s the best bang for your buck? Those are the types of questions we’ll aim to answer. Have a specific challenge? Send it our way: [email protected].
Deal or no deal: AI coding edition
TL;DR: SpaceX has secured the right to acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion later this year—or pay $10 billion for their work together if it passes. The decision may hinge on whether Cursor can help xAI close the gap with Anthropic and OpenAI in coding—and for a company heading toward a blockbuster IPO, it's a high-stakes bet on the most valuable real estate in AI right now.
Calculated risks
TL;DR: Not to be outdone by rival Anthropic, OpenAI said yesterday that its latest cybersecurity model is too unsafe to release publicly—at least right away. It comes on the heels of Anthropic similarly restricting Mythos last week and signals more guarded rollouts could become the norm as frontier models become ever more powerful.
How Intuit plans to ride out the ‘SaaS-pocalypse’ Original
Can you “vibe code” your own QuickBooks or TurboTax? Go ahead, Alex Balazs said. He’s the CTO of Intuit, the parent company of those financial tools. If a business builds interfaces with any of the major LLM services, they can still tap Intuit’s tools for tasks like invoicing or tax services through integrations with those AI platforms. Deals with the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI are part of how Intuit is rethinking its business for a post-SaaS-pocalyptic world.
How IT and tech leaders are persuading employees to roll out AI
When Intuit began encouraging employees to use generative AI, CTO Alex Balazs said there were “pockets” of resistance in a place he hadn’t expected: the top ranks of the engineering department. “Some of our best engineers fought it because they were lifelong coders, and they’re like, ‘I can write better code than this agent can,’” Balazs said. “It’s not a question of if you can write better code, it’s a question of, can it write code faster?
How Meta’s AI push is changing ad creation
Mark Zuckerberg has laid out a vision for the future of Meta’s core business: One day, advertising on the company’s platforms will be as simple as inputting a credit card number and a business goal. AI will take care of the rest. The company has reportedly said that day could come as soon as the end of 2026, according to a Wall Street Journal report last year. But media buyers and marketers we spoke with say it’s likely much further off, and reviews of the latest AI tools are mixed.
Apple still thinks different at 50
TL;DR: Today is Apple’s 50th birthday. The nearly $4 trillion consumer hardware giant got its humble start in a Bay Area garage on April Fools’ Day a half-century ago. Now, as AI reshapes Silicon Valley, Apple is still “thinking differently” from its Big Tech rivals—including when it comes to its eyebrow-raising AI strategy. What happened: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak—and lesser known co-founder Ronald Wayne— establishing the Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976.
OpenAI gives up on Hollywood dreams
TL;DR: OpenAI’s video generation app Sora is shutting down, the first casualty of the company’s reported plan to cull its “side quests.” This also means the end of Disney’s landmark $1 billion equity investment with the AI startup, which had always been a controversial coupling. Sora’s shuttering is a surprising twist after OpenAI spent the past couple years making Hollywood sweat, but it shows the company is serious about focusing its resources on enterprise and coding—for better or worse.
How Amazon is approaching the healthcare AI race
As Big Tech races to dress its AI in scrubs, Amazon has a key advantage: It already owns hundreds of clinics staffed by human doctors. Like some of its industry peers, the shopping and cloud giant has been rolling out a series of new AI-powered tools for providers and patients alike in recent weeks. Unlike competitors such as Microsoft and Google, however, these features are built around a real-world primary clinic network, One Medical, which Amazon bought in 2023.
Can AI replace sysadmins?
System, administer thyself. That’s what’s happening in IT departments as automation takes on more tasks once handled by system administrators. The role has already shifted in recent years with the rise of cloud computing and DevOps. And while experts say many of the tasks that make up sysadmin roles aren’t likely to disappear, the job title could change as the work becomes more big-picture and supervisory.
OpenAI’s new main quest is an old one
TL;DR: With Anthropic gaining ground, OpenAI wants to sharpen its focus and stop getting “distracted by side quests,” the Wall Street Journal reported this week. The new main mission: business customers and coding. It’s a notable switch-up for a company that turned ChatGPT into a byword for AI among the masses—and a sign of where the real money in the AI race is.
Meta announces four custom AI chips over two years
TL;DR: Meta is sprinting into the custom chip race, announcing plans to roll out four new in-house AI processors by 2027. The move mirrors a broader push across Big Tech to control more of the AI hardware stack as computing costs surge. But designing chips isn’t easy, and even if Meta pulls it off, powering AI features for its 3.58 billion daily users will still require a lot of third-party GPUs. Safe to say, this move doesn’t put Jensen Huang out of a job just yet.
A vibe check for AI coding
TL;DR: A recent string of outages at Amazon’s website and cloud services has revived questions about the risks of AI-assisted coding. Amazon publicly disputes claims that AI-generated code was responsible, but internal discussions and reports suggest generative AI tools may have played a role–highlighting an existential challenge in the tech industry about the risks of using AI to code.
Is it really the end of SaaS as we know it? Original
Are software companies like Oracle and Salesforce headed for the trash icon of history? Investors have been dumping their stocks in software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies since late January, with one trader (and dozens of headlines) dubbing it the “SaaS-pocalypse.” So while time will tell whether the end is actually nigh, change is in the air. And like seemingly all things business-related in 2026, that change is predicated on some form of AI.
Inside Microsoft’s strategy as it doubles down on healthcare ambitions
While ambulance chasing is typically associated with the legal profession, now, between a cohort of medically minded copilots and new tools for doctors and nurses, Big Tech companies seem to be racing toward hospitals. A top player in this sprint is Microsoft, which has edged into health systems already with its enterprise and cloud chops coupled with key partnerships and acquisitions.
A red line deadline for Anthropic
TL;DR: The clock is now ticking on the dustup between Anthropic and the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave the company until Friday at 5:01pm to meet its demands during a reportedly “tense” face-to-face yesterday, a senior defense official confirmed to Tech Brew.
Show More
loading
Actions
Get in touch with Patrick
Contact Patrick, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack