The news is finally out. Future+ will be hosting Startup Safari UK for 15 of India’s best and brightest tech founders in partnership with Startup Policy Forum India. You can read more about the announcement here. We are excited to build bridges across the UK-India tech, innovation and investment corridor.

This week, we are still unpacking all the major launch updates from Google’s I/O conference. This video with Sundar Pichai is a great interview for understanding what this shift means for creators, engineers, and everyday users, touching on everything from YouTube to agentic coding, and why today’s AI will look like a flip phone in three years.

Also, in case you missed it, it’s interesting to see CharlieXCX as the newest face (and investor) at Nothing. We are big fans, and it’s a great example of a culture-forward tech brand partnership.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

1. Google is becoming the interface for how we search, shop, and decide.

2. Martha Stewart pivots to AI home management.

3. Are POV shopping videos a risk for luxury?

4. SpaceX is capitalism on rocket fuel.

5. Personal exoskeletons are bringing AI into physical movement.

1. SEARCH, COMMERCE AND PLATFORM POWER

Google is becoming the interface for how we search, shop, and decide.

What’s happening: At I/O 2026, Google presented an AI search and agent ecosystem built to sit across discovery, shopping, and everyday digital tasks. Its new Universal Cart will roll out in the United States from summer 2026 across Search and Gemini first, with YouTube and Gmail to follow, giving users one cross-platform cart and a more continuous shopping journey. Google is also introducing information agents, Gemini Spark, and Daily Brief: a system of always-on assistants operating in the background across its products. The underlying shift is more consequential than any individual feature. Search is moving away from a link-based map of the web toward a mediated experience in which more consumer intent is resolved before a user ever leaves Google.

TLDR:

• Universal Cart is not just a checkout tool. It is an agentic hub for shopping, bringing Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail into one commerce flow.

• Google is pairing that commerce layer with a wider consumer agent stack. Information agents will run in the background, while Gemini Spark and Daily Brief extend the model into personal organisation and ongoing task management.

• This changes the role of Search itself. Google is moving from directing people to websites toward answering, filtering, and personalising the experience inside its own interface.

• For brands, product metadata and inventory accuracy now sit much closer to the point of decision. Backend product fields and real-time stock visibility are becoming increasingly important to whether a brand is surfaced and selected.

• The pressure on the open web is structural, not cosmetic. As AI answers absorb more discovery and comparison, more of the decision gets made before a click ever happens.

Why it matters: For luxury brands, retail operators, and publishers with meaningful digital exposure, Google is not refining search or adding a shopping feature. It is building an interface layer that can observe, filter, and act on a user’s behalf across commerce and everyday digital life. That raises the value of structured data, operational accuracy, and direct brand memory. For merchants and publishers, the more fundamental question is what the business looks like when the gateway to the web is also where the decision gets made.

2. CULTURE, HOME AND AI

Martha Stewart pivots to AI home management.

What’s happening: Martha Stewart has co-founded Hint, an AI home management startup that raised $10 million in seed funding led by Slow Ventures. The platform asks for a user’s address, pulls in public property and environmental data, and lets homeowners upload inspection reports, warranties, utility bills, and insurance documents. Hint is expected to launch on desktop and iOS this summer, with a proposition centred on maintenance, insurance, repairs, and the ongoing economics of running a home.

TLDR:

• Hint treats the home as an information problem, bringing documents, maintenance signals, and environmental data into one operating layer.

• Martha Stewart is a co-founder, not a campaign face, which gives the company a deeper layer of authority in a category built on trust and judgment.

• The company raised $10 million led by Slow Ventures, with Montauk Capital, Tusk Venture Partners, Amplo, Energy Impact Partners, Hannah Grey, and Brian Kelly also participating.

• The service enters a fragmented market where homeowners manage expensive assets with scattered paperwork and little strategic visibility.

• The broader signal is that lifestyle expertise is being rebuilt as software, with taste and utility now living inside the same interface.

Why it matters: Domestic life is as much a trust category as a product category, and the strongest consumer software in trust-dependent markets tends to arrive with pre-existing authority attached. Stewart brings editorial legitimacy accumulated over decades; AI gives that authority a scalable operating model. The more transferable insight for cultural and luxury operators is that category-defining expertise is increasingly the moat, not the product.

3. LUXURY, RETAIL AND DISTRIBUTION

Are POV shopping videos a risk for luxury?

What’s happening: Point-of-view shopping videos, often filmed discreetly inside luxury stores through Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, are going viral across TikTok and Instagram. One Patek Philippe visit, filmed by creator Sami Varelli, drew 50 million views after staff asked him to remove his glasses or leave, and the comments quickly turned into a public debate about service and elitism. Similar clips from Gucci and Loro Piana show how easily a boutique interaction shifts from a private-client moment to a mass online spectacle.

TLDR:

• Meta sold 7 million smart glasses in 2025, which has made recording more ambient, more discreet, and harder for boutiques to manage.

• These videos work because they feel unmediated. The audience experiences the store through the creator’s eyes, which gives luxury retail a new voyeuristic quality online.

• The upside is still real. A store experience people want to secretly document still carries mystique and cultural pull.

• The larger pressure sits in sentiment risk. A sales interaction that reads as cold, exclusive, or dismissive can become a reputational issue at platform scale.

• “No filming” policies are not enough. The stronger response is staff training, store awareness, and service behaviour designed for an environment where the camera may already be on.

Why it matters: The boutique is no longer only a controlled setting for conversion and clienteling. It is also a stage where brand behaviour gets captured, interpreted, and redistributed in real time. The operators who respond well will move beyond policy signage toward staff readiness and a more camera-native model of hospitality. The store remains one of the most valuable stages in luxury. The audience around it is now much larger than the one inside it.

4. CAPITAL, INFRASTRUCTURE AND SPACE

SpaceX is capitalism on rocket fuel.

What’s happening: SpaceX has filed for an IPO targeting roughly $75 billion in proceeds at a valuation of about $1.75 trillion, a scale that would make it the largest stock market flotation on record. The company now reads as an integrated infrastructure platform spanning rockets, satellites, communications, and adjacent AI-era ambitions. The filing brings one of the world’s most consequential private infrastructure businesses into the logic of public capital.

TLDR:

• SpaceX now reads as an integrated infrastructure platform spanning rockets, satellites, communications, and adjacent AI-era ambitions.

• The target raise and valuation place it in a category of its own. Public markets are being asked to price frontier infrastructure at a planetary scale.

• Much of the company’s strategic power comes from vertical integration, with control of the stack becoming part of the valuation story.

• The IPO turns space from a visionary narrative into a mainstream capital allocation question for institutions, investors, and governments.

• The broader message is that hard infrastructure is back at the centre of tech value creation.

Why it matters: SpaceX translates conviction built over more than a decade into an event that reframes physical infrastructure as a defining financial story of this cycle. Investors are pricing businesses that own the stack: launch, satellites, communications, and the downstream services that run on them. The rockets are the narrative. The infrastructure dependency is the position.

5. CONSUMER TECHNOLOGY AND WELLNESS

Personal exoskeletons are bringing AI into physical movement.

What’s happening: Hypershell’s $1,999 X Ultra S is part of a new class of hip-based personal exoskeletons designed for hiking, cycling, training, and assisted outdoor movement. Once associated with the military, heavy industry, and rehabilitation, these systems are now being sold to consumers as performance and endurance tools. In practice, the device can make climbs feel markedly easier and movement more powerful, even if the category still carries awkwardness, safety trade-offs, and visible social theatre.

TLDR:

• Personal exoskeletons are entering the consumer market at prices starting around $900, with Hypershell positioning the category around outdoor performance and endurance.

• The system uses a waistband, thigh braces, and AI software to interpret movement and deliver support across walking, climbing, and cycling.

• The product promise is not only accessibility. It also speaks to augmentation: letting users feel stronger, faster, and more capable in everyday physical settings.

• The category remains early. Rocky terrain, downhill control, battery dependence, and the risks of active robotic components still shape the experience.

• Robotics is moving from specialist use cases into lifestyle, fitness, and recreation, where aesthetics and behavioural trust will matter as much as function.

Why it matters: The next generation of embodied technology will sit across ageing, performance, and outdoor leisure, not only as a medical category. The companies that define this space will need design fluency, social acceptability, and a category language that makes augmentation feel desirable. The mechanics are solved enough. The cultural frame is still open.

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At the Code with Claude event in London today, listening to founders using Claude to build one-person companies, doing live workshops with the teams to build agents and troubleshooting 1-1 during their office hours. Fun. They have new dates announced in SF and will be coming to Tokyo next. Highly recommend signing up.

On my radar this week was an interesting story about a Stanford student named Theo Baker and his book How to Rule the World. It’s about his time at Stanford and the school’s often insidious relationship with the venture capital industry. There’s been a lot of interest around this recently; it’s set to become a bestseller. Given my recent trip to the Bay Area and my interest in Stanford’s GSB, I will definitely be adding this to my summer reading list.

An interesting round-up of news this week, including the shocking Everlane deal with China’s fast fashion behemoth Shein. It seems you can buy your way into brand credibility these days. Also, if the Gucci x Alpine F1 sponsorship deal goes through, it will confirm our prediction that the race is set to become the top sporting event for luxury, culture, and tech. You’ll know where to find us.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. Shein is buying Everlane in a $100 million deal.

2. Gucci is in talks to sponsor Alpine Formula 1.

3. Designer Jonathan Simkhai is building an AI storefront for e-commerce.

4. Google’s intelligent eyewear is entering the mainstream.

5. Ex-OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic.

1. RETAIL AND DISTRIBUTION

Shein is buying Everlane in a $100 million deal.

What’s happening: Shein is acquiring Everlane from its majority shareholder, L Catterton, in a deal that values the San Francisco label at roughly $100 million. Reports suggest common shareholders will receive no payout, a stark marker of how far digitally native apparel valuations have reset. The deal arrives as Shein expands beyond consumer retail into manufacturing services for third-party brands, while tariff pressure and regulatory scrutiny continue to bear on its core business.

TLDR:

• $100 million is a fraction of what Everlane once represented on paper. The markdown captures how decisively the market has turned against DTC brands that treated transparency as both a message and a moat.

• Shein is not buying demand. It is buying a vocabulary: restraint, considered consumption, and a version of American brand credibility that its supply chain cannot produce.

• Everlane’s residual value sits in trust, even after the economics became harder to sustain. That makes it strategically useful at a moment when infrastructure alone is no longer enough.

• Shein has already opened its manufacturing network to outside brands. Owning a culturally legible label extends that strategy from backend service to front-end positioning.

• Retail power is shifting toward operators who can combine operational efficiency with narrative legitimacy. Scale without cultural permission has limits.

Why it matters: This is less an M&A story than a distribution story in disguise. Tariff exposure, regulatory pressure, and consumer distrust are all raising the strategic value of brand meaning, and Shein understands that its supply chain cannot generate it. Everlane offers access to a language of moderation and considered spending that cannot be manufactured from infrastructure alone. It also tells you where cultural equity is currently being priced: lower than before, but still worth buying.

2. LUXURY AND SPORT

Gucci is in talks to sponsor Alpine Formula 1.

What’s happening: Alpine Formula One is in discussions with Gucci over a potential title sponsorship. No deal has been finalised. The talks matter regardless. Kering CEO Luca de Meo previously led Renault, Alpine's majority owner, and understands Formula One as a global branding instrument. The timing is notable: Alpine's partnership with BWT is nearing its conclusion, while luxury groups continue to deepen their presence across teams, races, hospitality, and lifestyle partnerships.

TLDR:

• If the deal closes, Gucci joins a luxury migration into Formula One that now includes LVMH, Ferrari with Armani, Aston Martin with Hugo Boss, and McLaren with TUMI. This is no longer sponsorship as logo placement.

• Luca de Meo links both sides of the conversation. He knows the sport as a brand platform and now oversees the group, with Gucci as the key narrative lever.

• Alpine offers a credible platform that still feels open. That gives a luxury house room to define the partnership’s tone rather than to fit into an overbuilt property.

• Formula One offers something luxury brands increasingly need: recurring global attention, premium male audiences, and a live emotional stage that fashion media no longer delivers with the same force.

• Gucci is looking for fresher public stages, with reach, velocity, and cultural pull. Formula One offers all three.

Why it matters: Read this as structural, not opportunistic. Formula One now offers one of the few global environments where brands can build identity at scale across geography, media, and live experience simultaneously. The properties that still allow meaningful positioning will not stay open indefinitely. The brands moving now understand that the sport has become a cultural platform, and the window to shape what that looks like is closing.

3. AI, COMMERCE AND INTERFACE

Designer Jonathan Simkhai is building an AI storefront for e-commerce.

What’s happening: Jonathan Simkhai is developing an AI-powered storefront for customers who arrive without precise search terms or product vocabulary. Most fashion demand does not begin with category logic. It begins with a mood, a reference, or a half-formed sense of what feels right. The brand is building an interface that interprets intent before the customer can fully articulate it, treating commerce less as catalogue retrieval and more as guided discovery.

TLDR:

• Traditional search rewards the shopper who already knows what they want. Most fashion customers do not begin there, and the interface has lagged behind that reality.

• An AI storefront shifts the experience from retrieval to conversational merchandising. It changes not only what gets surfaced, but how taste gets organised.

• Brands that control this layer gain more than conversion. They gain insight into ambiguity, aspiration, and latent demand, which are often more revealing than explicit search behaviour.

• In premium fashion, discovery is part of the product. The route to the item shapes its value.

• The strongest storefronts will increasingly act as a stylist, editor, and sales associate all at once.

Why it matters: Interface design is becoming a strategic layer rather than a service layer. Simkhai’s move points to a broader reordering of digital commerce: value is shifting toward whoever can translate vague desire into a confident decision. That has implications far beyond search. It affects merchandising, data, brand perception, and the architecture of demand itself.

4. HARDWARE AND CULTURE

Google’s intelligent eyewear is entering the mainstream.

What’s happening: At Google I/O this week, the company confirmed that audio glasses will launch this autumn, co-designed with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker and powered by Gemini. The announcement sat within a broader framing by Sundar Pichai around "hyper progress": Gemini 3.5 and Gemini 3.5 Flash were introduced as capability upgrades, AI Mode was rolled out across Google Search, and the keynote positioned agentic AI as Google's organising logic. The glasses handle directions, calls, texts, live translation, and multi-step tasks such as placing a food order, with user confirmation as the main intervention point. They pair with both Android and iOS.

TLDR:

• Audio glasses are coming this autumn, not at some undefined future date. Gentle Monster and Warby Parker supply the form factor, Gemini supplies the intelligence, and the category has now moved beyond prototype theatre.

• The keynote made Google’s position explicit: AI is no longer just there to answer prompts. It is there to complete tasks.

• Gemini 3.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, and AI Mode in Search widen the infrastructure underneath the hardware. The glasses are only the most visible expression of a larger system.

• Real-time translation, messaging, navigation, and task completion all point to the same ambition: an always-available interface that sits closer to the body than the phone.

• Meta Ray-Bans established the category. Google’s answer is to compete through intelligence, interoperability, and social acceptability rather than pure hardware spectacle.

Why it matters: This is the point where the category becomes commercially relevant. Google appears to have addressed the problem that has held smart glasses back for years: they look wearable. Gentle Monster and Warby Parker are not decorative partners. They are central to Google’s argument that ambient computing succeeds only when the object passes as desirable in public. That changes the brief for any brand operating near the face, the body, or the moment of purchase.

5. AI AND TALENT

Ex-OpenAI’s Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic.

What’s happening: Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and one of the field’s most recognised research and engineering figures, has joined Anthropic’s pre-training team. The move comes at a moment when frontier labs are competing not just on product velocity but also on model architecture, training systems, and research environments. Karpathy’s decision draws attention back to the foundation layer, where long-term advantages in model quality are still being established.

TLDR:

• Karpathy’s move carries weight across research, product, and talent markets at once. A hire of this profile is a market signal before it becomes an operating one.

• Joining pre-training rather than an applied or product unit points clearly to where Anthropic believes the real frontier still sits.

• Competition is consolidating around a small number of labs with the capital, computing, and research conditions to attract people at this level.

• Talent concentration compounds quickly. One high-profile arrival strengthens recruiting, internal ambition, and external confidence well beyond a single role.

• In frontier AI, personnel decisions increasingly function as capital signals. They shape how the market reads momentum.

Why it matters: Pre-training remains an active strategic ground. Application-layer businesses depend on the quality and direction of the model layer beneath them, and Karpathy’s move tells the market that Anthropic intends to compete aggressively at that level. The hierarchy among labs is not settled, nor is the capability stack that downstream companies will inherit.

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Interesting conversations at the Nice Aunties documentary preview dinner last night with the artist herself, Wenhui, and the ever-shifting ideologies around longevity, beauty and community. The long-standing questions around man vs machine have become more prevalent than ever, and I’m excited that this film so poignantly highlights the human emotion of the process. Weaving beauty and code through with emotion and storytelling.

An interesting startup that came to my radar this week is Interstellar Lab, which uses intelligent systems to autonomously grow flora and fauna on Earth and in Space. The visuals look stunning, and this is the go-to company for beauty giants’ floral perfume needs. So interesting, as we also cover the production of synthetic lichens designed to produce food and fuel for space missions in today’s issue.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. LVMH is selling Marc Jacobs.

2. Fashion’s sustainability pitch has moved into wellness.

3. Amazon merged Alexa and Rufus into a single shopping agent.

4. SpaceX is pricing a future where computing moves into orbit.

5. Synthetic lichen systems could produce food and fuel during space missions.

1. LUXURY AND CAPITAL

LVMH is selling Marc Jacobs.

What’s happening: LVMH has agreed to sell Marc Jacobs to a joint venture between WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group, with the buyers raising up to $850 million to fund the acquisition. WHP will hold the intellectual property, while G-III will run retail, e-commerce, and wholesale through a long-term exclusive licence. Marc Jacobs remains creative director. The transaction is expected to close before the end of 2026.

TLDR:

• LVMH is exiting Marc Jacobs after 30 years. The group’s portfolio is being reshaped with greater precision.

• WHP will own the brand. G-III will operate the business. The structure separates control of identity from day-to-day execution.

• Marc Jacobs remains in place as creative director. Continuity at the top supports the brand’s next phase.

• With Marc Jacobs added, WHP’s portfolio now exceeds $9.5 billion in global retail sales.

• The planned $850 million raise signals conviction in the brand’s licensing and distribution potential.

Why it matters: For founders, investors, and brand operators in our network, this is a clear signal in luxury ownership. Culturally resonant American labels are increasingly being reorganised through IP-led structures that prioritise brand control, licensing reach, and operating flexibility. Marc Jacobs now sits inside a model built for monetisation across channels and categories. The broader question is which other legacy names are best unlocked through the same structure.

2. FASHION AND CULTURE

Fashion’s sustainability pitch has moved into wellness.

What’s happening: Reformation, one of the brands that helped define sustainable fashion for a mainstream consumer, has shifted its messaging toward natural fibres, material transparency, and product longevity. The underlying operational work remains in place, but the customer-facing language has changed. Across fashion and beauty, brands are increasingly framing these decisions in terms of personal health, comfort, and daily use rather than environmental impact. The consumer logic is clear: according to the BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion 2026 report, 84% of US consumers rank wellness as a top priority, and 51% say they would maintain or increase wellness spending even if discretionary income were to tighten.

TLDR:

• Reformation’s material mix is now 98% natural or recycled fibre. The strategy remains intact, but the consumer framing has shifted.

• Shoppers are paying closer attention to polyester, microplastics, and material composition. The purchase decision is increasingly shaped by what feels proximate and physical.

• Brands such as Rise & Fall and Ilia Beauty are leading with quality, performance, and material integrity, with sustainability embedded in the proposition rather than foregrounded.

• Others are building adjacent routes through repair, product longevity, and clearer value communication.

• The category language is changing. Material trust and personal well-being now resonate more with consumers than sustainability terminology alone.

Why it matters: For brand operators, founders, and creative directors in our network, this is a shift in positioning with direct implications for product, storytelling, and retail language. Consumers are responding to materials through the lens of feel, safety, longevity, and personal well-being. That changes how value gets communicated. The brands gaining traction are aligning product truth with a language customers recognise immediately in their own lives.

3. AI COMMERCE AND DISTRIBUTION

Amazon merged Alexa and Rufus into a single shopping agent.

What’s happening: Amazon has launched Alexa for Shopping, combining Rufus’s product expertise with Alexa+ personalisation across devices. The experience is available to all US customers on the app, website, and Echo Show, with no Prime membership required. Users can query the main search bar in a conversational way, automate purchases through Scheduled Actions, and buy from third-party retailers via Buy for Me, which completes the transaction on their behalf. Shopping context now moves across Amazon surfaces and Alexa devices in both directions.

TLDR:

• Rufus reached more than 300 million customers in 2025. Amazon has now folded that product layer into Alexa’s broader personal context.

• The search bar has become a conversational interface. Discovery is being shaped through prompts, memory, and intent.

• Scheduled Actions allow users to automate routine purchases around timing, price, and personal conditions.

• Buy for Me extends Amazon’s role beyond its own inventory and into third-party retail transactions.

• With no Prime requirement, Amazon is rolling out agentic commerce across its full signed-in customer base.

Why it matters: For retail operators and brand owners in our network, Amazon’s commerce layer is becoming more mediated, more personalised, and more influential in surfacing products. Discovery now runs through an interface trained on purchase history, browsing behaviour, and device-level context. That changes how brands earn visibility. The commercial question is no longer just how a product ranks in search, but also how it enters the agent's recommendation logic.

4. INFRASTRUCTURE AND FRONTIER COMPUTE

SpaceX is pricing a future where computing moves into orbit.

What’s happening: Google and SpaceX are in discussions around orbital data centres as part of Google’s Project Suncatcher, an initiative to deploy 81 satellites carrying Google Tensor Processing Units into orbit. Prototype launches with Planet Labs are targeted for 2027. SpaceX is also presenting orbital compute as a core part of its reported $1.75 trillion IPO narrative, framing space-based infrastructure as a major future market for AI. The talks follow Anthropic’s agreement to use capacity from xAI’s Memphis facility, with orbital collaboration also under discussion. Google is in parallel talks with other launch providers.

TLDR:

• Project Suncatcher centres on 81 satellites, Google TPUs, and an orbital compute cluster, with prototype launches targeted for 2027.

• SpaceX is placing orbital data centres inside its long-range commercial narrative. The Google discussions are strategically important to both companies.

• Anthropic’s Memphis compute agreement with xAI points to a broader reshaping of who supplies frontier infrastructure and where that infrastructure sits.

• The economic case depends on launch costs continuing to fall, with Starship central to that thesis.

• Google has held a stake in SpaceX since 2015. This is an operational conversation with a long-standing financial relationship underneath it.

Why it matters: For capital allocators, infrastructure operators, and frontier technology founders in our network, Orbital Compute is emerging as a serious infrastructure thesis. The next phase of AI buildout is expanding the question from who owns chips and power to who defines the geography of compute itself. SpaceX is turning that premise into a market narrative ahead of one of the most consequential IPOs in circulation. Google’s involvement gives the category strategic weight early.

5. FRONTIER SCIENCE AND SPACE MANUFACTURING

Synthetic lichen systems could produce food and fuel during space missions.

What’s happening: Scientists at Imperial College London are developing synthetic lichen systems designed to produce food and fuel during space missions. The organisms pair cyanobacteria, which convert carbon dioxide and light into sugars, with yeast that transforms those sugars into fuels and food ingredients. The research draws on the symbiotic architecture of natural lichen and is built for missions where resupply from Earth is limited. It sits within a broader field of biomimetic space manufacturing that also includes mycelium-based construction materials and algae-derived oxygen systems.

TLDR:

• Synthetic lichens use carbon dioxide and light to generate sugars, then turn those sugars into usable fuel and food ingredients.

• The system is designed for closed-loop production, creating mission-critical resources within the environment itself.

• Lichen offers a resilient biological model for extreme conditions, which makes it a strong template for space manufacturing.

• Imperial’s work sits within a broader push to build production systems for environments beyond conventional terrestrial supply chains.

• Research from Imperial and Texas A&M signals growing scientific momentum behind off-Earth manufacturing.

Why it matters: For the founders, operators, and investors in our network who track longevity, wellness, deep science, and frontier infrastructure, this is part of the same broader shift: biology is becoming a production layer. Imperial’s research points to a future where living systems are engineered to manufacture essential resources in constrained environments. Read alongside orbital compute, the signal is clear. The next infrastructure cycle is being designed for conditions beyond Earth, with capital, science, and industrial ambition moving in parallel.

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Apologies in advance to everyone who got the newsletter last week, without my introduction. Admittedly, I was on the road (between SF and the Bay Area) and working on it on the go. It didn’t work out as planned.

The week in LA for the Milken Global Conference was nothing short of incredible. So many new connections, reconnecting with the network and also hosting our events. Posted more about it here. Thanks to everyone who reached out for more information. We will keep you on the list for everything coming up.

On my radar this week is the Audemars Piguet x Swatch collab, which has the internet polarised. AP’s CEO, Illaria Resta, shared more thoughts here, and we share more details in this issue below. Curious what you think?

Also on my radar this week is the digitally native skincare brand 4 AM, which raised 4 million in an oversubscribed seed round and is launching in 1700+ Target stores in the US. Read more here.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue

1. Thinking Machines is rebuilding the AI interface from scratch.

2. Nyobolt is turning battery chemistry into AI infrastructure.

3. OTB and Google are moving the fitting room into the client relationship.

4. Fitbit Air puts Google’s health play beneath the screen.

5. Swatch and Audemars Piguet turn the Royal Oak into a pocket watch.

1. AI INFRASTRUCTURE AND INTERACTION DESIGN

Thinking Machines is rebuilding the AI interface from scratch.

What’s happening: Thinking Machines has published a research preview of an interaction model built for continuous real-time exchange across audio, video, and text. The system runs in 200-millisecond streams, with one model handling live interaction and another handling deeper reasoning and tool use in the background. The proposition is clear: conversation is moving from interface to core system design.

TLDR:

• Continuous 200ms micro-turns across audio, video, and text.

• A dual-model setup splits live presence from deeper reasoning.

• The system handles interruptions, visual cues, and overlapping speech.

• Published benchmarks show strong interaction performance.

• A wider release is planned later this year.

Why it matters: Most enterprise AI products still assume the turn-based interface is good enough. This preview suggests that the assumption is beginning to break down. The more consequential question is not model quality in isolation, but what happens when interactivity itself becomes the product advantage.

2. CAPITAL AND PHYSICAL AI INFRASTRUCTURE

Nyobolt is turning battery chemistry into AI infrastructure.

What’s happening: Cambridge battery company Nyobolt has raised a $60M Series C at a $1B valuation, led by Symbotic, whose warehouse robots already run on its batteries. Nyobolt says its technology delivers ultrafast charging, long cycle life, and high-power response for systems that require continuous uptime. It is now pushing into warehouse robotics, humanoids, and AI data centre infrastructure, including a planned 100MW deployment in Rajasthan.

TLDR:

• Symbotic is both an investor and a customer.

• Nyobolt is already deployed in live robotics environments.

• The company is targeting robotics and AI infrastructure simultaneously.

• Rajasthan gives it exposure to one of the fastest-growing AI buildouts.

• Total funding now stands at roughly $160M.

Why it matters: Physical AI has an energy problem, and that problem is becoming investable. Nyobolt is a reminder that the strategic layer beneath robotics is no longer just compute. Power, charging, and uptime are starting to define who scales.

3. FASHION COMMERCE AND AI CLIENTELING

OTB and Google are moving the fitting room into the client relationship.

What’s happening: OTB Group has launched a virtual try-on tool built on Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, starting with Diesel and Jil Sander in the US and Europe. The product is designed for remote client consultations, with sales associates sharing 360-degree previews before an in-store visit. OTB plans to extend the rollout to Marni and Maison Margiela.

TLDR:

• The use case is clienteling, not passive browsing.

• Google’s infrastructure now sits inside OTB’s service layer.

• The rollout begins with Diesel and Jil Sander, then expands across the group.

• Customers can also place themselves inside branded campaigns.

• The tool links personalisation directly to conversion.

Why it matters: Luxury’s next AI layer is arriving through service, not spectacle. The important shift is where the data sits: inside the adviser relationship, before the store visit, and inside the direct client interaction. That is where value starts compounding.

4. WEARABLE HEALTH AND CONSUMER AI

Fitbit Air puts Google’s health play beneath the screen.

What’s happening: Google has launched Fitbit Air, a screenless fitness tracker priced at £84.99/$99.99. It tracks sleep, recovery, HRV, and step count, and pairs with a rebuilt Google Health Coach app powered by Gemini. The device goes on general release on 26 May.

TLDR:

• The screenless form is designed for continuous wear.

• Gemini-powered coaching now sits at the centre of the product.

• Google Health Coach replaces the Fitbit app entirely.

• The price opens the category to a broader audience.

• A Steph Curry edition adds cultural reach to the launch.

Why it matters: The hardware story is straightforward. The data story is larger. Fitbit Air points to where the strategic asset is being built: continuous biometric data at a mainstream scale, with an AI layer ready to shape behaviour on top of it.

5. LUXURY AND CULTURAL ACCESS

Swatch and Audemars Piguet turn the Royal Oak into a collectable accessory.

What’s happening: Swatch and Audemars Piguet have revealed Royal Pop, an eight-piece pocket watch collection that recasts the Royal Oak through Swatch’s 1980s POP format. Instead of producing a straightforward entry-level wristwatch, the collaboration turns AP’s octagonal design language into a colourful object designed to hang from chains, bags, or clothing. The collection uses a hand-wound mechanical movement adapted from SISTEM51, with transparent casebacks and graphic detailing that push it closer to a collectable design object than a conventional watch drop.

TLDR:

• Royal Pop is a pocket watch collection built around Royal Oak design codes.

• The release includes eight colourways, each tied to the Royal Oak’s eight-sided bezel.

• The collaboration is designed to be worn on chains, bags, or clothing, not just kept on the wrist.

• The movement is a reworked SISTEM51 adapted into a hand-wound mechanical setup with extended power reserve.

• The product lands as a fashion object, a watch reference, and a collector's piece at once. This last point is an editorial inference based on the product format and styling described by Culted.

Why it matters: The interesting move here is not accessibility alone. It is category slippage. Audemars Piguet has taken one of watchmaking’s most recognisable design signatures and moved it into the space between fashion accessory, collectable, and mechanical object. That gives the collaboration cultural reach without forcing AP into a direct entry-level Royal Oak wristwatch.

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Excited to be in LA next week for the Milken Global Conference, where I will be hosting investors, family offices, and consumer tech brands in our network. There are a few times each year when we truly understand the signals and shifts across capital and culture, and being part of Milken is definitely one of them. If you are in LA/ SF next week, please reach out.

Something that caught my eye this week was Doji’s try-on, which features the latest Chanel Cruise show looks. You can try on yours by downloading the app, and for inspiration, see here.

In today’s issue, Gucci x Google partners to launch AI glasses, On’s lightspray robot for spray-on shoes under 3 minutes, Victoria Beckham and DressX AI twins, Europe’s largest seed round to build AI without humans, and finally, Google’s Pentagon deal, which Anthropic had refused, is now live.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. Kering is building the first luxury AI glasses.

2. On’s LightSpray robot is rewriting how performance footwear is manufactured.

3. Victoria Beckham and DressX are putting an AI twin in every online fitting room.

4. Ineffable Intelligence has raised the largest seed round in European history.

5. Google has signed the Pentagon’s AI deal.

1. LUXURY AND HARDWARE

Kering is building the first luxury AI glasses.

What’s happening: At its capital markets day in Florence, Kering CEO Luca de Meo confirmed plans to launch AI-powered smart glasses under the Gucci brand in partnership with Google, targeting a 2027 release. The move sits within de Meo’s broader agenda to grow Kering’s eyewear and jewellery divisions and diversify away from Gucci’s core fashion exposure. Kering will compete directly with EssilorLuxottica and Meta, which hold an estimated 82% of the smart glasses market through Ray-Ban Meta.

TLDR:

• Gucci x Google for 2027, confirmed by the CEO. This is a strategic declaration, not a rumour.

• Samsung entered with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker. Kering arrives with the most culturally weighted brand on the list.

• Google’s Android XR platform already spans XREAL, Gentle Monster, and Warby Parker. Gucci raises the cultural register of the entire ecosystem.

• De Meo’s broader thesis: a single brand identity imposed uniformly across every market is losing relevance. Smart glasses allow market-by-market differentiation.

• Kering Eyewear already operates at scale across the group. The infrastructure exists. The missing element was a technology partner credible enough to carry the Gucci name.

Why it matters: The question of which brand holds cultural legitimacy at eye level is being answered in real time. Samsung sequenced its smart glasses strategy fashion-first; Google has now done the same, choosing Gucci. The houses that sit this cycle out will find the aesthetic language of wearable AI has already been written without them.

2. MANUFACTURING AND PERFORMANCE

On’s LightSpray robot is rewriting how performance footwear is manufactured.

What’s happening: Swiss sportswear brand On brought its LightSpray robot to London ahead of the city’s marathon, demonstrating the technology live at a pop-up in Hanover Square. LightSpray condenses approximately 200 traditional upper-assembly steps into a single three-minute robotic spray. On recently opened a second manufacturing facility near Busan, South Korea, with 32 robots, increasing production capacity thirtyfold.

TLDR:

• 200 assembly steps into three minutes. This is a manufacturing architecture shift, not an iteration.

• The Busan facility moves LightSpray to consumer scale. The technology has moved beyond elite-only drops.

• Hellen Obiri wore the Cloudboom Strike to a podium finish at the London Marathon. The performance credentials are live.

• On framed the London activation around wellness programming alongside the robot demonstration. This is a cultural moment being narrated as much as a product one.

• LightSpray reduces material waste and lowers carbon footprint relative to conventional assembly. The sustainability case compounds the design story.

Why it matters: The manufacturing process is becoming part of the brand narrative, and On brought the robot onto the streets of London to make that argument directly to consumers. The Busan expansion is the more consequential signal: this is no longer a proof of concept. The brands that can demonstrate genuine material innovation at consumer scale and simultaneously build the cultural frame around it will define what premium performance means in the next cycle.

3. FASHION E-COMMERCE AND AI IDENTITY

Victoria Beckham and DressX are putting an AI twin in every online fitting room.

What’s happening: Victoria Beckham has launched an AI-powered virtual try-on tool on its e-commerce site in partnership with DressX. Shoppers can try selected garments on a full-body photograph or via a personalised AI twin generated from a selfie, with video try-on showing garments from multiple angles and in motion. The platform generates size recommendations from either a full-body image or a selfie, along with user measurements. DressX reports that try-on users convert to purchase at ten times the rate of those who do not, with up to seven times higher long-term retention.

TLDR:

• An AI twin from a selfie, showing garments in motion and from multiple angles. A different proposition from image overlay.

• Conversion ten times higher, retention up to seven times higher. The commercial case is unambiguous.

• Live on Victoria Beckham’s own site, not a marketplace test. Applied to the brand’s direct customer relationship.

• Sizing uncertainty drives the majority of returns in luxury e-commerce. A credible solution restructures channel unit economics.

• DressX frames this as a precision problem: fashion demands visual accuracy that standard AI tools miss.

Why it matters: The conversion and retention numbers are not a feature story; they are a margin argument. Every fit interaction builds a proprietary data asset: how garments behave on real bodies, at scale, across a direct channel. The brands that integrate this now, rather than waiting for platform adoption, will hold a compounding advantage. The AI twin is not a novelty layer. It is becoming the infrastructure of the fitting room.

4. CAPITAL AND AI ARCHITECTURE

Ineffable Intelligence has raised the largest seed round in European history.

What’s happening: David Silver, who led the reinforcement learning team at Google DeepMind and was the principal researcher behind AlphaGo and AlphaZero, emerged from stealth with Ineffable Intelligence, a London-based lab founded in November 2025. The company raised $1.1 billion at a $5.1 billion valuation, the largest seed round in European history. Sequoia and Lightspeed co-led, with Nvidia, Google, Index Ventures, DST Global, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund participating. NVIDIA’s venture arm contributed at least $250 million. No product, no roadmap. The mission: a superlearner that discovers knowledge through experience rather than human-generated data.

TLDR:

• $1.1 billion, $5.1 billion valuation, no product. The capital is pricing a paradigm thesis.

• Silver’s argument: LLMs are trained on human data, a finite resource. Reinforcement learning learns from experience and carries no such ceiling.

• AlphaGo Zero proved the logic at the game level: trained on no human data, it beat the world’s best players. Silver is betting the same principle scales beyond games.

• Sequoia, Lightspeed, Nvidia, Google, DST Global, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund in the round. Compute, distribution, sovereign backing, and long-duration capital simultaneously.

• The UK government’s involvement in the Sovereign AI Fund marks a shift from policy statements to direct capital positioning in frontier research.

Why it matters: What this raise tells you is where sophisticated capital believes the LLM architecture cycle ends. The thesis is not that language models will become irrelevant; rather, the most significant value will be captured by systems that generate genuinely new knowledge, not by those that recombine existing human output. The industries most exposed are those where the relevant knowledge has never been written down: manufacturing, physical medicine, and materials science. That is a different disruption map from the one most operators are currently planning against.

5. POLICY AND THE GEOPOLITICS OF AI

Google has signed the Pentagon’s AI deal.

What’s happening: Google has reached a classified agreement with the US Department of Defence allowing its AI systems to be used for "any lawful government purpose," according to Bloomberg and The Information. The deal was finalised despite a letter from more than 700 Google employees, including senior DeepMind figures, urging CEO Sundar Pichai to refuse. It places Google alongside OpenAI and xAI in the Pentagon’s supplier base. Anthropic remains in an active lawsuit against the DoD after refusing equivalent terms and being designated a supply chain risk.

TLDR:

• Google’s agreement covers "any lawful government purpose,” the same language Anthropic rejected.

• More than 700 employees, including DeepMind directors and vice presidents, signed an open letter opposing the deal before it was signed.

• In 2018, Google withdrew from Project Maven following employee protests. Proceeding now is a deliberate reversal.

• Anthropic’s lawsuit remains active. A judge has granted an injunction against the supply chain risk designation while the case proceeds.

• Pentagon AI chief Cameron Stanley confirmed the expanded relationship with Google and noted that overreliance on a single vendor is not strategically sound.

Why it matters: Two AI companies faced the same terms and made opposite decisions. The cost of each is now visible: a supply chain designation and a lawsuit on one side; significant internal dissent and a public reversal of stated principle on the other. Every AI company with government adjacency is watching. The frame for what responsible AI commitments mean in practice, when they conflict with a client’s requirements, is being set inside this dispute.

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We’ve been busy preparing for our trip to LA for Milken and SF next, so if you are a tech founder or brand leader reading this and would like to meet or be included in some of our programming, reach out to us at info@futureplus.xyz.

In today’s issue, we cover Claude Design, MTS, Cursor, SpaceX, Anthropic’s Mythos leak, and Blue Energy’s $380 million raise.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. Foundation model companies are coming for the design layer.

2. MTS shows doomscrolling is not a business model.

3. SpaceX’s Cursor deal makes distribution a core AI moat.

4. The Mythos leak raises the stakes for frontier-model security.

5. Blue Energy positions nuclear as industrial infrastructure.

1. DESIGN AND AI INTERFACES

Foundation model companies are coming for the design layer.

What’s happening: Anthropic has launched Claude Design, a tool that turns natural-language prompts into working product prototypes. The move takes the company further into the software creation stack and places it closer to the environments where products are shaped, tested, and signed off. The reference point is Figma, but the real shift is broader: model companies are moving into the workflow itself.

TLDR:

• Claude Design moves Anthropic deeper into product workflow.

• The design surface is becoming a strategic layer in the AI stack.

• Prompt-to-prototype tools shorten the path from concept to execution.

• The real value sits in the iteration loop.

• Design software is starting to behave like infrastructure.

Why it matters: The design layer now carries strategic weight. Once model companies enter prototyping, they gain access to the patterns inside the workflow: how decisions are made, what gets approved, and where judgment sits. The question is no longer whether AI can produce a mock-up. It is who controls the environment where product decisions take shape.

2. MEDIA, ATTENTION AND BUSINESS MODELS

MTS shows doomscrolling is not a business model.

What’s happening: The reaction to Marc Andreessen’s MTS has settled around a familiar weakness in digital products. Time spent still draws attention, but attention alone no longer reads as a durable value. Products built around compulsion can still generate activity at scale, yet that activity does not always convert into trust, pricing power, or lasting utility. MTS has become a useful readout of where that logic starts to break down.

TLDR:

• MTS has sharpened the debate around attention-first products.

• Time spent is proving to be a weak proxy for value.

• Compulsion can drive scale without creating durability.

• In premium markets, curation and signal carry more weight.

• Attention is easy to capture. Durable behaviour is harder to build.

Why it matters: The strongest digital products do more than capture time. They shape action, judgment, and identity. That distinction matters in media, culture, and luxury, where the product is always training the user in what to value. The businesses that hold their ground are the ones that turn attention into trust, utility, or status.

3. CAPITAL, DEFENCE AND AI DISTRIBUTION

SpaceX’s Cursor deal makes distribution a core AI moat.

What’s happening: The reported $60 billion SpaceX deal involving Cursor drew such a strong reaction because it clarified where leverage is moving in AI. The centre of gravity has shifted toward distribution, institutional access, and workflow depth. A customer like SpaceX signals more than revenue. It signals trust, entrenchment, and proximity to a system that matters.

TLDR:

• The reaction shows how much weight the market now puts on distribution.

• SpaceX signals institutional depth and high-trust deployment.

• Cursor becomes harder to dislodge once it sits inside how elite teams work.

• Enterprise adoption now carries real strategic weight.

• The field is tightening around companies that can secure workflow lock-in.

Why it matters: AI now looks like a race for position inside important systems. Once a company owns a workflow inside an institution that matters, it becomes structurally difficult to replace. Distribution is becoming infrastructure, and infrastructure is where value tends to settle. That applies to luxury groups and creative enterprises as directly as it does to aerospace.

4. SECURITY, SECRECY AND FRONTIER MODELS

The Mythos leak raises the stakes for frontier-model security.

What’s happening: Users leaked Anthropic’s AI model, Mythos, by reportedly guessing its location, putting Frontier Model's security under uncomfortable scrutiny. The significance lies in the alleged method's simplicity. In a sector built on technical sophistication, basic operational weakness lands hard. When frontier labs ask to be treated as critical infrastructure, the standard rises with them.

TLDR:

• The reported exploit appears simple, which makes it more damaging.

• Model secrecy now carries strategic value.

• Leaks affect timing, trust, and narrative control.

• Frontier AI firms are asking for infrastructure-level credibility.

• Operational discipline now sits at the centre of the credibility question.

Why it matters: Leading AI labs increasingly present themselves as trusted partners to governments, enterprises, and major institutions, raising the bar across the whole stack. In this market, technical capability alone is not enough. Trust now also depends on operational seriousness. The question is whether frontier AI companies are operationally ready for the roles they are claiming.

5. ENERGY, INFRASTRUCTURE AND INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Blue Energy positions nuclear as industrial infrastructure.

What’s happening: Blue Energy has raised $380 million to build grid-scale nuclear reactors in shipyards, pushing the category toward repeatable industrial production. That framing matters. Nuclear has long carried the weight of delay, cost overruns, and political risk. Building reactors in shipyards reframes the challenge around manufacturing, logistics, and deployment.

TLDR:

• The shipyard model brings production discipline into the category.

• Nuclear is being positioned as deployable infrastructure.

• Capital is moving toward energy systems that can support AI and industrial demand.

• The story now includes sovereignty, resilience, and capacity.

• Digital growth is turning energy into a strategic asset again.

Why it matters: The constraint in this cycle is becoming physical infrastructure. Energy now sits much closer to the centre of AI, advanced industry, and national competitiveness. Blue Energy reflects a broader repricing of the systems that enable digital expansion. The next advantage will belong to those who control the infrastructure on which intelligence depends.

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Last week, I was at Watches and Wonders as a guest of Hermès and was blown away by the sheer scale of the designs, the set designs for every brand, and the exhibition halls. I wrote about it here and shared more on my IG, and this NYTimes article shares accurately how the fair has evolved to reflect our times. The presence of influencers and creators was clear, as validated by YouTube’s continued growth for the second year in a row.

One of the things that caught my eye this week was Google’s clever ( and very timely) product placement, integrating its VTO release into search (which we shared last week here) with a spot in the newly released Devil Wears Prada 2- check it out here.

In this week’s issue, Coachella is now a proof-of-concept environment for experiential strategy; AI influencer clones; Highsnobiety and Google Pixel’s partnership to launch a tech-first fashion school; Mira Duma’s new fashion tech platform; and highlights from Milan Design Week.

📢 We are officially at issue 100! Feels like we’ve reached a milestone. Thank you to everyone who has read, shared, and supported it from the beginning, and to those joining us now. As Codes of Culture evolves alongside Future+, some future issues will sit behind a paywall as we build a broader media and intelligence platform around the work.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. Coachella’s brand perimeter has become the destination.

2. Influencers are licensing their likenesses to AI.

3. Google Pixel and Highsnobiety built a school for independent fashion founders.

4. Sparkit wants to put a full fashion production studio in a single app.

5. Milan Design Week opened under the theme “Be the Project.”

1. CULTURE AND SOFT POWER

Coachella’s brand perimeter has become the destination.

What’s happening: Weekend one of Coachella generated $870 million in Media Impact Value, nearly equalling the prior year’s total across both weekends. The highest-performing activations were brand environments rather than stages. Rhode’s invite-only world tied to the Bieber headline generated $10 million in MIV. 818 operated as a multi-brand host platform. Pinterest ran a phone-free experience that earned outsized coverage by resisting every other brand’s instinct. Dior generated major fashion media presence through costume, dressing Sabrina Carpenter in four custom looks without building a single physical space. Some attendees this year made the trip without a festival ticket, arriving only for the brand environments.

TLDR:

• $870M in Media Impact Value from weekend one alone. Coachella is now a compressed content production event that happens to include a music festival.

• Rhode built a world around the Bieber headline, generating $10M in MIV. The most effective activations felt like destinations, with campaign logic secondary.

• Pinterest ran against every other brand’s instinct and earned significant coverage precisely because of it.

• Dior generated major fashion coverage through cultural capital at zero activation cost.

• Some attendees came without festival tickets. When the perimeter becomes the destination, that is a structural shift, a permanent one.

Why it matters: Coachella is now a proof-of-concept environment for experiential strategy at a global scale. The brands that performed best outframed rather than outspent. That activation logic will define how premium brands approach every tentpole this year. The question is whether you arrive with a world or a stand.

2. CREATOR ECONOMY AND AI

Influencers are licensing their likenesses to AI.

What’s happening: Vanity Fair’s investigation into AI influencer clones documents how platforms, talent agencies, and creators are moving quickly to commercialise digital likeness. Khaby Lame sold biometric rights to Rich Sparkle Holdings in a transaction reportedly valued at $975 million in stock, with the company projecting his digital twin could generate over $4 billion in annual product sales. CAA is now treating digital twin management as a core priority. YouTube, Meta’s AI Studio, and TikTok’s Symphony Avatars all have live or in-development creator-clone infrastructure. A study of over 500 US influencers found that 62% reported burnout, which they cited alongside global scaling as the primary reason creators are considering delegating their digital presence.

TLDR:

• Lame’s deal is valued at $975M in stock. Rich Sparkle Holdings’ share price subsequently fell more than 90% from its January high. The distance between the pitch and proof of concept is significant.

• CAA is managing digital twin portfolios. Talent agencies are repositioning around likeness governance.

• YouTube, Meta, and TikTok all have creator clone infrastructure in place. The distribution rails are already built.

• 62% of influencers report burnout. AI cloning is being sold as both a scalability and a wellness solution simultaneously.

• The consent and IP framework is still in its early stages. The legal questions creators face now will extend well beyond the creator economy.

Why it matters: The structural question is who controls the consent layer, and what happens to parasocial trust once the person on screen may or may not be present. Brands building long-term creator relationships need to be negotiating likeness and AI rights now, ahead of the moment those clauses become contested.

3. FASHION, TECH AND EDUCATION

Google Pixel and Highsnobiety built a school for independent fashion founders.

What’s happening: Highsnobiety and Google Pixel have launched PIFT, the Pixel Institute of Fashion and Technology: a year-long programme for emerging fashion entrepreneurs combining brand-building mentorship, industry lectures, and hands-on project development, with Google Pixel embedded as the creative production tool throughout. The 2026 cohort includes Chet Lo, Priya Ahluwalia, Matthias Schweizer, and the Ottolinger co-founders. The programme’s first major activation is at Milan Design Week, where a public Build-A-Brand workshop demonstrates the central thesis: a smartphone, the right methodology, and the right access can deliver what fashion schools used to require years and significant expense to provide. The stated aim is to democratise tools, networks, and industry knowledge previously available only to the well-connected.

TLDR:

• A year-long structured programme. PIFT is designed to produce commercially credible designers with educational substance behind the partnership.

• Google Pixel is the creative tool embedded throughout the process, capturing, developing, and publishing work at every stage. The hardware is the curriculum.

• Access to Milan Design Week is built into the programme from week one. Cultural event proximity is treated as education infrastructure.

• Chet Lo, Priya Ahluwalia, and the Ottolinger founders are in the cohort. The talent selection signals serious curatorial intent.

• The explicit thesis is access: opening what has historically required a fashion school pedigree, an established network, and years of runway adjacency.

Why it matters: Fashion education is expensive, opaque, and heavily networked. PIFT is a direct intervention in that model, with a technology company providing the tools, a culture platform providing the access, and working designers providing the curriculum. Whether it produces the next generation of independent labels or primarily builds loyalty to Google hardware is the question worth watching. The model signals where fashion talent development is heading.

4. FRONTIER TECH AND FASHION

Sparkit wants to put a full fashion brand studio in a single app.

What’s happening: Mira Duma’s new company, Sparkit, is a mobile platform that lets creators design, produce, and launch a fashion brand in a single app. Its AI system, Gabi, combines 17 specialist agents across brief-to-tech pack, factory sourcing, and live storefront. The platform connects to over 700 vetted factories across three quality tiers, more than 300 mills and materials science labs, and ships to 196 destinations. No minimum order. No upfront production cost. Designs are made on demand. A community funding layer allows supporters to back brands and earn from sales.

TLDR:

• From concept to live storefront in a single AI conversation. Design, production, sourcing, and logistics handled in one place.

• No minimums, no upfront cost. On-demand production removes the inventory risk that has historically made it expensive to start independently.

• 700-plus factory partners across three tiers, 300-plus material science labs. Supply chain access that would previously have taken years of industry relationships to assemble.

• A native community funding and revenue-sharing model is built into the infrastructure from launch.

• Sparkit launches the same week PIFT opens in Milan. Both apply pressure on the same gatekeeping mechanisms from opposite directions.

Why it matters: The supply chain relationships that have historically underpinned mid-market and premium-brand advantage, factory access, material knowledge, and minimum-order leverage are being turned into software features. The more interesting question is whether luxury’s value proposition, which depends partly on process opacity and perceived scarcity, holds as that infrastructure becomes accessible and legible.

5. DESIGN AND CULTURAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Milan Design Week opened under the theme “Be the Project.”

What’s happening: Milan Design Week 2026, running 20–26 April, is the 64th Salone del Mobile, hosted across Brera, Tortona, Isola, and two new Alcova venues at a former military hospital and Villa Pestarini. The Fuorisalone theme, “Be the Project,” reorients the week toward creative process and responsibility rather than finished output. Triennale Milano anchors the institutional programme with Toyo Ito’s retrospective of Andrea Branzi, the Eames Houses exhibition, including the debut of the Eames Pavilion System developed with Kettal, and Alphabet, tracing thirty years of Barber and Osgerby. Off-site, Zaha Hadid Architects presents a mindfulness installation for Audi; Lina Ghotmeh has built a labyrinth inside Palazzo Litta’s courtyard; Samsung is running a twelve-zone experiential exhibition; and Issey Miyake is transforming waste paper into furniture.

TLDR:

• “Be the Project” frames process, experimentation, and responsibility as the subject. The editorial position determines which conversations get legitimised during the week.

• Triennale’s Branzi retrospective, Eames Houses, and the Barber and Osgerby retrospective together make this year’s institutional programme a deliberate act of canon-building.

• Alcova’s expansion into a former military hospital continues its model of placing independent and experimental work in charged historical spaces. The geography of legitimacy is moving outward from the centre.

• Samsung, Audi, and Prada Frames are participating this year. That integration has now normalised.

• Milan is hosting the establishment and its challengers simultaneously this week. PIFT and Sparkit are both here, in the same city, making the same argument from different angles.

Why it matters: Milan Design Week has quietly become one of the most valuable experiential stages on the global brand calendar, and this year’s roster makes that explicit. Audi, Samsung, and Prada are not showing up as sponsors; they are building immersive environments that sit alongside institutional retrospectives and independent design exhibitions. That is a deliberate strategic choice. The week draws an audience of cultural decision-makers, press, and creative industry leaders that no single brand event can replicate, and the city’s distributed format means a well-conceived installation travels far beyond the people who walk through it.

Writing this issue from Geneva, where I spent a spectacular 2 days at Watches and Wonders, discovering and being immersed with the most exquisite watchmakers in the world.

Something that caught my eye this week was the AI influencers that SheerLuxe and SheerLuxe Labs launched. 4 bots- each one with a distinct look, personality and expertise. So real that if the content wasn’t AI labelled, it would have been hard to know the difference between real and AI. Curious to hear your thoughts.

In this week’s issue, luxury AI campaigns are failing, Nvidia gives fashion a stage in Paris, Google puts VTO in search, and can scent be turned into data?

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. Luxury AI campaigns are failing the same test: audiences are reading intent before output.

2. NVIDIA gave fashion a stage at GTC Paris.

3. Google folded virtual try-on into search, pushing fashion discovery into infrastructure.

4. Allbirds sold its footwear business for $39 million and pivoted to AI computing.

5. Turning scent into data. The molecular archive now has cultural stakes.

1. LUXURY MARKETING AND AI

Luxury AI campaigns are failing the same test: audiences are reading intent before output.

What’s happening: Business of Fashion’s April 2026 analysis of AI in luxury advertising points to a recurring pattern across campaigns from Gucci, Moncler, Valentino, and Prada: the audience response is shaped less by technical quality than by what viewers think the technology was there to do. Gucci was criticised for opacity. Prada and Valentino drew scrutiny for uncanny imagery. Moncler landed differently by framing AI as a way to create scenes that could not otherwise exist.

TLDR:

• Gucci, Prada, and Valentino were penalised when AI was read as a shortcut rather than a creative choice.

• Moncler was explicit about intent and framed AI as an imaginative expansion.

• Many luxury marketers are misreading the audience.

• Heritage houses carry higher stakes when they use synthetic imagery.

• Transparency matters, but motive matters more.

Why it matters: Luxury still depends on the perception of care, skill, and intent. AI does not automatically undermine that. Cost-saving logic does. The issue is not whether a brand used AI. It is whether the audience believes the tool extended the work or reduced the effort behind it.

2. FASHION TECH AND THE CREATIVE STACK

NVIDIA gave fashion a stage at GTC Paris.

What’s happening: NVIDIA’s AI Art Gallery at GTC Paris featured a dedicated fashion chapter curated in partnership with the Fashion Innovation Agency at London College of Fashion. The projects included an AI catwalk generating runway environments at speed, generative campaign and lookbook experiments developed with students, and early work on ALIGN FASHION, an AI agent designed to support circular decision-making in fashion design.

TLDR:

• NVIDIA is positioning fashion as a serious domain for compute-led creativity.

• The AI catwalk compresses visual development from weeks into minutes.

• ALIGN FASHION applies AI to design decisions, not just image generation.

• Students are already training on these AI tools.

• The real constraints now sit with institutions, curricula, and creative leadership.

Why it matters: Fashion’s AI story is moving away from campaign novelty and toward production logic, education, and decision-making. That makes the institutional layer more important than the software itself. The schools and labs that shape how designers work with these systems will also influence the industry’s aesthetic language.

3. DISTRIBUTION AND AI COMMERCE

Google folded virtual try-on into search, pushing fashion discovery into infrastructure.

What’s happening: Google’s experimental try-on app Doppl will close on 30 April 2026, with the technology moving into Google’s core products. Virtual try-on will now appear directly on product listings and apparel image search results, powered by Gemini 2.5 Flash Image. DressX’s Agent platform adds avatar generation, AI styling, and checkout across more than 200 luxury brands and one million products.

TLDR:

• Doppl is closing because virtual try-on is moving into search itself.

• Discovery, visualisation, and shopping are starting to sit in the same environment.

• DressX is building the digital fashion asset layer beneath that shift.

• Virtual try-on is becoming part of the distribution layer rather than a standalone feature.

• Brands treating it as a differentiator are misreading the direction of travel.

Why it matters: Once try-on sits inside search, discoverability starts with product data, image readiness, and inventory structure rather than campaign spend alone. That shifts power away from the front-end brand moment and toward the systems feeding the interface. In fashion commerce, infrastructure is becoming the new storefront.

4. CAPITAL AND PRODUCT CORRECTION

Allbirds sold its footwear business for $39 million and pivoted to AI computing.

What’s happening: Allbirds, once valued at $4 billion at its 2021 IPO, sold its footwear brand and assets to American Exchange Group for $39 million in late March 2026. The remaining listed entity will pivot to AI compute infrastructure under the name NewBird AI and has secured a $50 million convertible financing facility. The company plans to acquire GPUs and lease access to a market where supply remains tight.

TLDR:

• A $4 billion brand sold its core business for $39 million. The listed shell is now targeting GPU leasing.

• The $50 million compute raise exceeds the proceeds from selling the footwear business.

• The market thesis is clear: compute is scarce, and scarcity is commanding the premium.

• The company is also seeking to remove its B Corp commitments from its charter.

• The stock spike showed how quickly markets will reward an AI infrastructure pivot.

Why it matters: This is a sharp readout of how capital is being repriced. A values-led consumer brand now attracts less excitement than a listed vehicle with a route into computing. That does not say everything about long-term durability, but it says a great deal about the current market. Infrastructure is where the premium sits.

5. CULTURE AND THE SENSES

Turning scent into data. The molecular archive now has cultural stakes.

What’s happening: Artist and entrepreneur Siddhartha Kunti translates the molecular structure of fragrance into digital artworks, using gas chromatography data to render what the nose detects but the eye cannot see. His first major series analysed more than 800 whiskies and generated over 65,000 lines of molecular data, debuting at the Saatchi Gallery in 2025 alongside nanotechnology scent cards developed with Sissel Tolaas. His latest work, commissioned for Art Dubai Digital 2026, centres on Oud.

TLDR:

• Kunti combines molecular analysis with data visualisation to produce digital sculptures of specific aromas, from whisky to Oud.

• The Saatchi Gallery's debut paired digital art with scent cards. The scientific method is part of the work’s credibility.

• The Art Dubai commission treats Oud as cultural material, not decorative reference.

• Digital art now faces a higher credibility threshold than it did during the NFT cycle. Method matters more.

• The institutional layer is starting to catch up.

Why it matters: Scent has long shaped memory, ritual, and brand identity, but it has rarely been treated as something that can be archived with precision. That is what makes this work more than an aesthetic experiment. Oud is one of the most culturally specific materials in luxury. Once it is encoded digitally, the question becomes who defines the archive and who holds authority over the record.

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Yesterday I attended a talk by Intelligence Squared with Demis Hassabis, the founder of Google DeepMind and Sebastian Mallaby, the author of The Infinite Machine, about Demis’s life and work. I shared more on LinkedIn here.

In today’s issue, we cover Midi Health’s billion-dollar valuation and what it signals for women’s health, Anthropic’s apparent move into app creation inside Claude, Waymo’s planned London launch, Google’s push to turn Gemini prompts into reusable browser behaviour, and the rise of functional fragrance as scent shifts from indulgence toward efficacy.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. Midi Health crossed the $1 billion mark, turning menopause care into a platform play across women’s health.

2. Leaked screenshots suggest Anthropic is building an app creator inside Claude, pushing the model layer directly into product creation.

3. Waymo is targeting a commercial launch in London by September, bringing autonomous ride-hailing to Europe.

4. Google turned Gemini prompts into reusable browser skills, embedding AI workflows directly into Chrome.

5. Functional fragrance is moving toward supplement logic, with scent increasingly framed around mood, stress, and focus.

1. CONSUMER HEALTH AND CAPITAL

Midi Health crossed the $1 billion mark, turning menopause care into a platform play across women’s health.

What’s happening: Midi Health, the US women’s telehealth platform founded by Joanna Strober and Sharon Meers, raised $100 million in a Series D led by Goodwater Capital, pushing its valuation past $1 billion. The business began with menopause and perimenopause care and later expanded into cardiology, metabolic health, obesity, sleep, and longevity. It now serves more than 25,000 patients a week across all 50 US states.

TLDR:

• $100 million Series D at a $1 billion-plus valuation. Goodwater led the round, with Serena Ventures, GV, Foresite, McKesson, and Felicis participating. Total funding is now $250 million.

• Midi used menopause as the entry point, then expanded into broader care categories. The wedge was specific. The business was always larger.

• AI is being used across chart analysis, clinical decision support, and protocol refinement. That operational layer is central to scale.

• Women’s health continues to receive a small share of private healthcare investment. Midi joining Maven at unicorn status marks a shift in how the category is being capitalised.

• The executive bench now looks built for scale. The company is being shaped for long-term expansion.

Why it matters: Women’s health is being financed with a level of seriousness that reflects the size of the market rather than the legacy assumptions around it. The more important signal is structural. Midi did not stop at a single life stage or one care need. It used menopause as an entry point into a broader care platform, then built the operational layer required to deliver that at a national scale.

2. AI INFRASTRUCTURE AND PLATFORM STRATEGY

Leaked screenshots suggest Anthropic is building an app creator inside Claude, pushing the model layer directly into product creation.

What’s happening: Leaked screenshots on X appear to show Anthropic testing a full-stack application builder inside Claude, with tools to generate apps directly from a prompt. The interface appears to include live preview, database support, authentication, and one-click deployment, all within the chat environment. Anthropic has not confirmed the feature, but if authentic, it would mark a move beyond model access and developer tooling into direct product creation.

TLDR:

• The leaked interface suggests Claude could generate front-end, back-end, database, auth, and deployment components in a single workflow. That points to product creation, not coding assistance.

• This is distinct from Claude Code. Claude Code is a developer tool. The leaked builder appears aimed at users with little or no technical fluency.

• Lovable built a major business on top of Claude. If Anthropic moves directly into that territory, the platform boundary changes.

• Anthropic has already moved into higher-value product categories. This would extend that logic further up the stack.

• The real question is not whether model companies expand upward. It is how much of the application layer they choose to own.

Why it matters: The stack is starting to compress in plain sight. Once the model layer can generate, deploy, and manage applications inside the same interface, value begins to concentrate higher up the chain. That changes the terms for every startup built on top of foundation models. Defensibility is increasingly a function of workflow, distribution, brand, and proprietary data rather than access to the model.

3. AUTONOMOUS MOBILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Waymo is targeting a commercial launch in London by September, bringing autonomous ride-hailing to Europe.

What’s happening: Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle company, is targeting an April passenger pilot and a September launch of commercial driverless ride-hailing in London, subject to regulatory approval. Around two dozen vehicles are already mapping the city in a supervised phase. If approved, London would become Waymo’s first commercial market outside the United States and its first in Europe.

TLDR:

• April for a pilot, September for a commercial target. The key variable now is regulatory approval.

• London offers a dense urban test case with complex traffic, heavy pedestrian flow, and demanding road conditions.

• The UK’s liability framework matters. Under the Automated Vehicles Act, responsibility sits with the operator rather than the passenger.

• Wayve is running parallel trials in the same city as Uber. London is becoming a live proving ground for autonomous systems.

• The UK is treating autonomous mobility as part of its industrial strategy and transport policy.

Why it matters: London provides autonomous ride-hailing with a serious regulatory and urban testbed in Europe. The value in that is not confined to the vehicle or the passenger experience. It sits in fleet operations, insurance design, charging infrastructure, public policy, and city-level partnerships. Once autonomous mobility enters a market like London, the story becomes one of systems coordination as much as technology deployment.

4. CONSUMER AI AND DISTRIBUTION

Google turned Gemini prompts into reusable browser skills, embedding AI workflows directly into Chrome.

What’s happening: Google launched Skills in Chrome, allowing users to save Gemini prompts as reusable workflows that run across webpages and open tabs. A prompt for comparing products, extracting recipe data, or summarising documents can now be saved once and triggered again through a slash command. Google is also releasing a library of prebuilt Skills across research, shopping, budgeting, and productivity.

TLDR:

• A saved prompt becomes a repeatable browser action. One of consumer AI’s main frictions starts to disappear.

• The early use cases are practical: product comparison, long-document scanning, recipe extraction, and budgeting.

• Chrome’s scale makes this meaningful. A browser-level feature can quickly alter user behaviour.

• As prompts accumulate inside a Google account, the browser starts to function as a personal instruction layer.

• The browser is becoming an AI surface, not just a place where AI tools are accessed.

Why it matters: AI is moving from a destination product to an operating layer. Once instructions live inside the browser itself, discovery begins to shift before a user reaches a brand interface, a publisher page, or a product listing. That changes how information is filtered, how products are evaluated, and where intent is formed.

5. LUXURY WELLNESS AND FRONTIER BEAUTY

Functional fragrance is moving toward supplement logic, with scent increasingly framed around mood, stress, and focus.

What’s happening: Business of Fashion reported that searches for “functional fragrance” reached a record high in March 2026, up 25 per cent from November and double the level of a year earlier. Brands including Initio Parfums Privés, The Nue Co., and Vyrao are defining the category by framing fragrance around mood, stress, focus, and physiological effect rather than sensory pleasure alone. What began as a wellness-adjacent niche is now moving into the wider fragrance market.

TLDR:

• Search interest is rising quickly. Consumer curiosity is outpacing category definition.

• The premise is straightforward: scent reaches the brain quickly, making it attractive for products framed around mood, stress, and focus.

• The category is not uniform. The Nue Co., Initio, and Vyrao each position the logic differently.

• Claims about stress reduction, mood, and focus are spreading across the fragrance category. The scrutiny on formulation and efficacy will increase with them.

• Fragrance is being repositioned as both a functional and an expressive product.

Why it matters: Fragrance has traditionally been sold through identity, atmosphere, and desire. Functional fragrance introduces a different purchase frame built around outcome, effect, and intervention. That affects brand language, retail context, product development, and consumer expectation. Once a scent is sold with an efficacy promise attached, the rules around credibility begin to change.

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What stood out to me this week was how many industries are being forced to confront the same question from different angles: what, in fact, sits between the product and the person now? In beauty, that increasingly looks like messaging; in retail, it looks like experience as infrastructure; in wellness, it looks like a correction to the science itself; and in fashion tech, it looks like the quiet but necessary shift from front-end excitement to back-end utility.

Sharing insights and highlights from Vogue Business’ Future of Wellness event, one of our favourite fashion tech newsletters right here on Substack, ATFT’s Q1 highlights, and more news on our radar for the end of the week.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. Fenty Beauty moved its beauty advisor to WhatsApp.

2. Meta signed a 10-year lease on Fifth Avenue.

3. Wellness in 2026 is correcting the science it was built on, and the market is bifurcating as a result.

4. Coty withdrew its guidance, lost its CEO, and now faces a securities class action.

5. All Things Fashion Tech’s Q1 review.

1. BEAUTY AND COMMERCE INFRASTRUCTURE

Fenty Beauty moved its beauty advisor to WhatsApp.

What’s happening: Fenty Beauty has launched Rose Amber, an AI-powered beauty advisor built directly into WhatsApp, in its first formal partnership with Meta in the US. Named after one of Rihanna’s favourite Gloss Bomb shades, the advisor offers shade matching, product recommendations, tutorials, and customer reviews across Fenty Beauty, Fenty Skin, and Fenty Hair. Charles powers the commerce layer behind the integration. Fenty has already said that international expansion and in-app purchasing are the next steps. That matters because L’Oréal is already further ahead: in Brazil, more than 20% of its direct-to-consumer sales now come through conversational commerce on WhatsApp.

TLDR:

• Rose Amber is live in the US across all three Fenty lines. The next move is in-app purchasing, not more experimentation.

• L’Oréal’s Brazil business has already shown what scaled WhatsApp commerce can look like. The benchmark exists.

• Meta now reports more than one billion active daily business conversations across its messaging platforms. Consumer behaviour has outpaced most brand strategies.

• The opportunity is not customer service alone. It is discovery, recommendation, and conversion inside a channel people already use constantly.

• Messaging is becoming infrastructure. The brands that move early will have more control over how that layer feels.

Why it matters: Conversational commerce is starting to look less like a brand experiment and more like a channel strategy. In markets where messaging already sits close to transaction, the advantage will go to brands that can make that experience feel guided, premium, and native to the wider brand world. Beauty is especially well-suited to that shift because the category depends so heavily on recommendation, reassurance, and routine. What Fenty is really testing here is not a chatbot. It is whether messaging can become a high-intent commerce layer for prestige beauty.

2. FASHION, TECH AND CULTURAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Meta signed a 10-year lease on Fifth Avenue.

What’s happening: Meta has extended its Fifth Avenue presence in New York with a 10-year lease, taking over a five-level, 15,000-square-foot townhouse on Millionaires’ Row, between Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and Dior. What began as a short-term pop-up in late 2025 is now a permanent experiential space, with a café, content studio, community area, and in-store customisation for its AI glasses. A second flagship, Meta Lab LA, opened last October. Nothing is pursuing a similar logic, using physical retail and fashion-coded activations to build hardware appeal. The shift here is clear: tech companies are no longer borrowing fashion’s symbolism for a campaign or a collaboration. They are building the same kind of brand infrastructure that luxury has relied on for years.

TLDR:

• Fifth Avenue is not just a retail address. It is a positioning statement.

• The operating model mirrors luxury more than electronics retail: experiential, staffed, clienteling-led, and built to hold attention.

• Tech brands are moving beyond collabs and runway adjacency. They are building stores, environments, and narratives of their own.

• The problem they are solving is familiar: how to create desire around products with functional alternatives.

• Fashion’s toolkit now belongs to a much wider competitive set.

Why it matters: Meta’s Fifth Avenue move matters because it turns a familiar cultural borrowing exercise into something much more durable: commercial infrastructure. Luxury brands have long had an advantage in world-building, physical experience, and symbolic positioning. That advantage starts to narrow when tech companies stop referencing fashion and start replicating the experience architecture that once set luxury apart. A collaboration is fleeting. A long lease on Fifth Avenue is a claim on territory, attention, and cultural legitimacy.

3. WELLNESS, LONGEVITY AND CAPITAL

Wellness in 2026 is correcting the science it was built on, and the market is bifurcating as a result.

What’s happening: The wellness market is being reshaped by two structural shifts at once. The first is a long-overdue correction inside longevity: women age differently from men, and a growing body of research now points to ovarian decline as a central driver of systemic ageing. That is pushing the market beyond generic longevity language and into a more specific category built around women’s healthspan. The second shift runs in the opposite direction. As optimisation culture becomes more exhausting than aspirational, some of the fastest-growing parts of wellness are moving away from constant tracking and toward social saunas, nervous system regulation, communal rituals, and lower-stimulation experiences. The global wellness economy reached $6.8 trillion in 2024 and is projected to approach $10 trillion by 2029.

TLDR:

• Longevity science is correcting for male biological defaults, and that correction is now shaping product design, clinical focus, and capital.

• Women’s healthspan is becoming a category in its own right, not a side conversation within menopause or general wellness.

• In beauty, skin longevity is replacing anti-ageing as the preferred language, with skin framed as a health marker rather than a surface problem.

• At the same time, there is a growing backlash against over-optimisation and constant self-measurement.

• The market is not consolidating around one future. It is splitting into hardcare and softcare, and both are growing.

Why it matters: The important thing here is that wellness is no longer moving in a single direction. One part of the market is becoming more clinical, more data-led, and more biologically precise. Another is becoming more emotional, more communal, and less interested in performance as a lifestyle. Brands that try to speak to both without understanding the difference will sound vague at best and inauthentic at worst. The opportunity is significant in both lanes, but the language, product architecture, and trust signals required for each are completely different.

4. BEAUTY CAPITAL AND GOVERNANCE

Coty withdrew its guidance, lost its CEO, and now faces a securities class action.

What’s happening: A federal securities class action filed in March 2026 names Coty, former CEO Sue Nabi, and other senior executives. The complaint covers the period from November 2025 to February 2026, during which management continued to say that sales trends were improving and reaffirmed a $1 billion adjusted EBITDA target for fiscal 2026. In early February, Coty reported a 17% decline in adjusted EBITDA, weakness across both Prestige and Consumer Beauty, and withdrew full-year guidance. Nabi departed the same day. Coty shares fell by roughly 22% across the period. The complaint argues that softness in Consumer Beauty, slowing Prestige fragrance growth, and margin pressure linked to marketing spend were not adequately reflected in the company’s earlier guidance.

TLDR:

• The class period covers exactly the months in which Coty maintained an improving outlook that later results did not support.

• Prestige fragrance, one of the sector’s strongest recent categories, was already showing signs of slowing.

• Consumer Beauty was under pressure at the same time, making the group picture weaker than the headline narrative suggested.

• The timing of the guidance withdrawal and CEO exit deepened the damage.

• The broader issue is visibility: how clearly public markets can really see what is happening inside large beauty portfolios.

Why it matters: The significance lies less in the litigation itself than in the structural question underneath it. Large beauty groups present investors with a consolidated narrative, but the underlying categories often move at very different speeds and for very different reasons. That becomes more important as prestige fragrance loses some of the momentum that helped carry the sector over the past two years. When one category can no longer hide softness in another, disclosure, sequencing, and management credibility come under much harder scrutiny.

5. FASHION TECH AND AGENTIC COMMERCE

All Things Fashion Tech’s Q1 review.

What’s happening: Q1 2026 made one thing much clearer: the most commercially credible AI story in fashion right now is not consumer-facing styling, but operational infrastructure. All Things Fashion Tech’s quarterly review captured the gap between agentic commerce as a concept and the systems required to make it work in practice. OpenAI scaled back its more ambitious in-app checkout plans and shifted toward brand plug-in integrations, a quieter approach that better matches the still-limited number of merchants actually set up for agentic transactions. Swap raised $100 million to build the transaction layer for AI agents. Microsoft and PayPal launched seamless checkout inside Copilot. The broader pattern is increasingly obvious. The glamorous front-end vision is still compelling, but the near-term value is being created in logistics, forecasting, returns, and merchandising.

TLDR:

• OpenAI’s checkout reset looks more like sequencing than retreat. Merchant readiness remains the bottleneck.

• Swap’s raise points to where the real work is happening: the infrastructure layer beneath agentic commerce.

• Microsoft and PayPal’s Copilot integration is one of the clearest signs that checkout is beginning to move into AI environments.

• Q1’s strongest shift was away from styling narratives and toward operational AI with measurable commercial impact.

• Fully agent-owned checkout still faces unresolved trust, liability, and permission questions.

Why it matters: Fashion tech has spent the last year talking loudly about AI at the point of inspiration. The more interesting shift now is happening deeper in the stack. Back-office infrastructure is proving easier to deploy, easier to justify, and far more likely to produce real commercial returns in the short term. The longer-term question remains the biggest one: who controls the agent that ultimately acts on the consumer’s behalf? But before that comes into view, brands need machine-readable product data, cleaner inventory architecture, and checkout systems that can actually support that future when it arrives.

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This week’s issue is slightly longer with 10 stories on our radar covering recap of the recent Shoptalk event in Las Vegas where the best technology solutions present to the biggest retailers. Agentic commerce has been at the top of everyone’s agenda, and tracking announcements at events gives us a macro understanding of the trends and capital flowing into the space.

We also recap both Prada’s Frames symposium, which highlighted the existential question of our times: who owns AI image generation, and EssilorLuxottica’s wearables summit, which interestingly positioned the eye and its wearables as a health platform that tracks data and uses AI to detect systemic conditions.

Especially interesting (and worrying) this week was The New Yorker’s coverage of Sam Altman’s growing influence on the future of AI and whether one person can really be trusted with all the control. Scroll on for all the stories.

Finally, we have officially re-launched the newly updated Future+ website, which has been a labour of love since the start of the year.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. Shoptalk 2026 reveals how AI agents are transforming the shopping experience from discovery to checkout.

2. Sam Altman’s increasing influence over the future of AI.

3. Google’s AI-powered adverts drove an 80% increase in sales for Aritzia.

4. Prada Frames explores who controls imagery in the age of AI at Milan Design Week.

5. Pixel Moda demonstrates how AI is revolutionising large-scale fashion imagery production.

6. Nothing announces its entry into the AI glasses market with a design-led approach.

7. EssilorLuxottica highlights the convergence of eyewear, AI, and healthcare innovation.

8. Indian startup Rocket launches an AI tool offering strategy consulting at a fraction of the usual cost.

9. Medvi faces scrutiny after revelations of fabricated data behind its AI success story.

10. NASA’s Artemis II mission advances human spaceflight further, pushing lunar ambitions.

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    Agentic commerce owns discovery. The storefront still owns the close.

    The defining story at Shoptalk Spring was OpenAI quietly sunsetting Instant Checkout, its attempt to complete purchases inside ChatGPT, and pivoting to a discovery-and-handoff model through its Agentic Commerce Protocol, with Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, and Wayfair already integrated. Sephora is now inside ChatGPT. Gap is purchase-enabled inside Gemini. Meta has rebuilt shopping summaries and checkout across Instagram and Facebook. The floor data was sobering: 60% of shoppers who receive an AI recommendation still go and research before buying; only 18% transact immediately. That gap is the whole story. AI is taking over the moment of intent, but it is not yet closing the sale. For retail and brand operators, the question is whether your product feeds, pricing logic, and data infrastructure are clean enough to convert attention that now arrives from an interface you do not own.

    The New Yorker is asking the governance question OpenAI keeps deferring.

    Drawing on new interviews and internal documents, The New Yorker’s profile revisits the 2023 OpenAI board crisis and lands in an uncomfortable place: the doubts about Altman were never really about personality. They were about candour, the concentration of power, and whether the people constructing this technology are sufficiently accountable for what they produce. OpenAI has spent two years managing that story. The New Yorker is reopening it. For capital allocators and enterprise buyers with material exposure to OpenAI’s ecosystem, the governance question is not an abstract one. A single founder’s control over a general-purpose technology at this pace and scale is one of the most significant structural risks in the market right now. The profile is asking it on the record. The answer is still open.

    Google’s AI ad tools drove Aritzia’s revenue up 80%. Performance marketing has a new architecture.

    Google’s AI Max campaign tool reads a brand’s creative assets and product catalogue, then interprets conversational search queries, now averaging 45 words against the old two-to-three keyword standard, to match intent to inventory in real time. Aritzia’s 80% lift in online revenue is not a creative optimisation story. It is evidence that the matching layer between customer intent and product is being rebuilt by the platforms that own the search interface, and is being rebuilt fast. For fashion and retail brands with significant paid acquisition budgets, the question is not whether to engage with these tools. It is whether your creative assets, product data, and catalogue structure are clean enough to perform inside them. The brands that are waiting are not just missing out on efficiency gains. They are being outpaced on discoverability by those that are not.

    Prada Frames is asking who controls the image.

    The fifth edition of Prada’s annual symposium, In Sight, held at the Santa Maria delle Grazie complex in Milan, was focused on image-making as a political and material force: the infrastructure it depends on, the energy and labour it consumes, and who controls the conditions of its production. Conceived by Formafantasma, the event spent five editions building toward exactly the question AI image generation has now made unavoidable. What is striking is where the conversation has arrived. This is no longer a cultural theory seminar. The struggle over who owns visual culture and who controls the systems that produce it is showing up in boardrooms, in content contracts, and in procurement decisions. Prada is staging that conversation in one of the most symbolically loaded spaces in Milan. That is not incidental.

    Pixel Moda produced 14 million fashion images with AI.

    Pixel Moda creates AI-assisted and AI-generated content for more than 900 global brands, and presented its model at BoF VOICES alongside Etro’s chief executive, who credited the partnership with 46% e-commerce growth over 12 months. The model is deliberately human-led: AI directs photographers, stylists, and models on set, then uses those assets as inputs for generative outputs, including body swaps, background changes, and per-SKU video, content that used to be cost-prohibitive for all but the largest houses. The signal here is not that AI is replacing the studio. It is that the studio now has a different architecture, and the question is whether the creative layer directing it is strong enough to maintain brand identity as volume multiplies. The brands still running workflows designed for 500 images a season are already operating in a different era than the ones that are not.

    Nothing is entering AI glasses.

    London-based Nothing is developing AI glasses targeted for the first half of 2027, featuring cameras, microphones, and speakers in a design similar to Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses. CEO Carl Pei shifted from initial resistance to a multi-device view after seeing the category’s early traction, itself a signal worth noting. For luxury brands and hardware operators tracking ambient AI devices, Nothing’s entry matters for the same reason Samsung’s partnership with Gentle Monster mattered: it confirms that the primary constraint on mass adoption is design and social acceptability, not the technology. Meta, Samsung, Google, and Nothing have now converged on the same hardware thesis within a narrow window. When operators of that scale reach the same conclusion at the same time, the question for luxury is not whether eyewear strategy belongs in the conversation. It is how quickly it moves to the centre of it.

    EssilorLuxottica is repositioning the eye as a health platform.

    EssilorLuxottica’s inaugural SWITCH summit convened more than 1,000 doctors, scientists, and technologists around oculomics: using advanced retinal imaging and AI to detect systemic conditions, including diabetes and neurological disease, through the eye. The company already controls the dominant global eyewear distribution infrastructure through Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley, LensCrafters, and Sunglass Hut. That combination, diagnostic capability sitting inside a distribution system that already reaches hundreds of millions of people, is the thing worth paying attention to. For luxury wellness, longevity, and premium healthcare investors, the category is repositioning from optical correction to continuous health monitoring. The interface closest to the face is becoming the one that reads it most intimately. What sits above that layer, in experience design, data governance, and brand relationship, is still wide open.

    A startup in Surat is pricing McKinsey-style strategy reports at $250 a month.

    Rocket, based in Surat with operations in Palo Alto, generates consulting-style strategy documents covering pricing, unit economics, go-to-market, and competitive intelligence, drawing on more than 1,000 data sources. Its thesis is direct: as coding is commoditised by AI, the strategic layer above it is where the next value gap opens. The outputs still require human verification. But the more consequential point is the price signal itself. The market is beginning to set a floor for AI-assisted strategy work, and that floor is lower than most incumbents have modelled or are comfortable acknowledging. The firms most exposed are those whose value proposition rested on access to proprietary frameworks and aggregated data rather than judgment built from genuine operating experience. That distinction between analytical access and earned perspective is where the value will concentrate and where the pressure will fall hardest.

    Medvi was celebrated as the first one-person unicorn, but it was built on 800 fake doctors.

    The New York Times profiled Matthew Gallagher as proof that one person with AI could build a billion-dollar company. The revenue figures cited, $401 million in 2025 from two employees, came from an unaudited private LLC with no independent verification. What has been independently documented is rather different: more than 800 fake Facebook doctor profiles with AI-generated images, deepfaked before-and-after patient visuals, and an FDA warning letter for misbranding violations that arrived six weeks before the profile ran. A class action and a data breach affecting 1.6 million patient records followed. The Times piece has since been heavily scrutinised. For investors and enterprise buyers tracking AI in healthcare and wellness, Medvi is the clearest illustration yet of what happens when AI is used to fabricate the trust layer rather than earn it. The regulatory window that made this possible is closing. The harder question is how many companies in adjacent categories are operating closer to this model than their positioning suggests.

    Artemis II has taken humans farther from Earth than any crew in history. The infrastructure for a lunar economy is being tested now.

    NASA’s Artemis II crew has completed a circumlunar flyby, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13. This is not a landing, but that is precisely the point. The strategic significance lies in what the mission is building toward: Artemis III targets the lunar south pole, with the longer ambition of sustained human presence beyond Earth. For deep-tech investors and capital allocators tracking the space economy, the Artemis programme is public infrastructure in the most literal sense: the enabling layer on which commercial lunar operations, resource extraction, and eventually off-Earth compute will depend. The test is live. The commercial layer above it is being built in parallel. The organisations that understand the infrastructure timeline are the ones positioned to shape what eventually runs on top of it.

    ---

I have been thinking about the difference between a funding round and a land grab. Yesterday, with OpenAI closing $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, it feels like a land grab. The numbers are unreal! The investors are not backing a product. They are staking a claim on the layer on which everything else will run. Once you see that frame, it is hard to unsee it, and that’s what I kept returning to this week. Last week, I also shared a quick link news recap about OpenAI sunsetting Sora, but I wanted to go a bit deeper into why it matters in today’s issue.

In other news, (more exciting news!) I will be at Watches and Wonders in Geneva in a couple of weeks as a guest of Hermes (still in shock!), and I look forward to sharing more about it soon. Plans are also in full swing for the F1 Miami race weekend, and the official Miami fan fest has been announced, along with Cannes Lions programming for many of Future+’s partners and clients. If you are looking to have a presence at either, please reply to this email so we can share more information.

If you are new here, or want to catch up on the best of Codes of Culture, we’d recommend you start here and remember to subscribe for full access to our news, insights, podcast and global events.

📖In this issue:

1. OpenAI closed Silicon Valley’s largest-ever funding round

2. Starcloud raised $170 million to build data centres in space

3. Bluesky built an AI app that lets users write their own algorithm

4. Sora shut down by OpenAI six months after launch

5. Anthropic accidentally leaked the source code for Claude Code

1. AI, CAPITAL, AND CORPORATE STRATEGY

OpenAI closed Silicon Valley’s largest-ever funding round.

What’s happening: OpenAI closed a $122 billion funding round at an $852 billion post-money valuation, the largest in Silicon Valley history. The round was anchored by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, with continued participation from Microsoft and co-leadership from Andreessen Horowitz, D.E. Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG, and T. Rowe Price. For the first time, OpenAI extended participation to individual investors through bank channels. The company is generating $2 billion in monthly revenue and consolidating its product stack into a unified AI system that combines ChatGPT, Codex, browsing, and agentic workflows. A potential IPO is being prepared for as early as late 2026.

TLDR:

• $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation. OpenAI has broken its own funding record twice in twelve months.

• The structural signal is not the size. Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank supply the compute and distribution that OpenAI’s products run on. They are now also shareholders. The line between supplier and backer has gone.

• Amazon’s $50 billion includes $35 billion conditional on AGI or an IPO. The capital has terms attached that tie investment to product outcomes.

• The unified superapp signals consolidation of the interface. One system for ChatGPT, Codex, browsing, and agentic workflows has fewer entry points and more lock-in.

• Retail investor access through bank channels is a pre-IPO positioning move. OpenAI is broadening its shareholder base before going public.

Why it matters: For the capital allocators and infrastructure-adjacent operators in Future+’s network, the important signal is not the size of the round but the collapse of the boundary between supplier, distributor, and shareholder. Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank are not betting on a product. They are underwriting the physical layer that Frontier AI runs on, and now hold equity in the company that those products build. AI is no longer being financed as a product category. It is being financed as infrastructure. The competitive position is increasingly determined at that layer, and everything built above it is downstream.

2. INFRASTRUCTURE AND FRONTIER CAPITAL

Starcloud raised $170 million to build data centres in space.

What’s happening: Starcloud, a Redmond-based space compute company founded in 2024, closed a $170 million Series A at a $1.1 billion valuation, led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures. The round makes it the fastest company in Y Combinator history to reach unicorn status, just 17 months after demo day. Total funding stands at $200 million. Starcloud launched its first satellite in November 2025, carrying an Nvidia H100 GPU, the first terrestrial-grade chip of that class to reach orbit, and subsequently trained an AI model in space. Starcloud-2, due later this year, will carry Nvidia’s Blackwell B200 and AWS server hardware.

TLDR:

• The premise: terrestrial data centres are colliding with hard limits around power, land, water, and permitting. In low Earth orbit, solar power is abundant, cooling is passive, and grid dependency disappears.

• Starcloud-1 proved the thesis at a technical level. The company now holds proprietary data on operating high-performance AI chips in orbit, knowledge that competitors are not yet able to replicate.

• Cost-competitiveness depends on launch compression. CEO Philip Johnston estimates viability when launch costs reach roughly $500 per kilogram, tied to commercial Starship availability in 2028 or 2029.

• Starcloud is not alone. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Google’s Project Suncatcher, and Aethero are all pursuing adjacent positions. The infrastructure race has moved beyond Earth.

• Benchmark’s board seat is the signal beneath the valuation. This is conviction capital pricing a long-duration infrastructure map, not current revenue.

Why it matters: For the sovereign wealth funds, infrastructure investors, and enterprise operators in our network building positions in the AI compute stack, Starcloud is a proxy for where the constraint is heading. Space computing will not replace terrestrial infrastructure in this decade. But the capital being deployed now is pricing the trajectory of launch economics and energy access over the next ten years. When Benchmark leads a round of this size into a company with one satellite and no commercial revenue, they are making a structural view on where compute will live. The geography of AI infrastructure is becoming a strategic question, not just a technical one.

3. SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND OPEN PROTOCOLS

Bluesky built an AI app that lets users write their own algorithm.

What’s happening: At the ATmosphere developer conference in Vancouver, Bluesky unveiled Attie, a standalone AI app built on the AT Protocol and powered by Anthropic’s Claude. It lets users build personalised social feeds in plain language rather than code: describing what they want to see and letting the system construct the logic. Because the AT Protocol is an open data system, Attie draws on a user’s full activity across the Bluesky ecosystem rather than a single platform’s proprietary graph. The longer-term roadmap extends to user-built social applications. The launch coincides with Bluesky disclosing a further $100 million in funding, giving the 43.4 million-user platform more than three years of runway.

TLDR:

• Attie is a standalone logic layer, not a feature inside the main app. That separation is the point: it positions recommendation as a configurable infrastructure rather than a platform-controlled output.

• The AT Protocol’s openness is the structural enabler. Feed logic can be built and ported across any app in the ecosystem without requiring any platform to release proprietary data.

• Bluesky’s founder, Jay Graber, is explicit: dominant platforms use AI to increase time spent and harvest training data through systems users cannot inspect. Attie is designed as the inverse.

• The roadmap extends to user-built social apps in natural language. Schneider has compared the potential of the Atmosphere ecosystem to WordPress, a platform layer that enables independent construction.

• $100 million in new funding gives Bluesky a runway to pursue this as a structural infrastructure bet rather than a monetisation experiment.

Why it matters: For the media platforms, cultural institutions, and brand operators in our network that have spent years building audiences inside closed recommendation systems, the strategic relevance here is not Attie as a consumer product. It is what happens to the distribution logic as the open protocol model scales. The algorithm has functioned as a proprietary moat; it determines what gets seen, by whom, and in what context. If the recommendation becomes a configurable infrastructure that any operator can build on, that moat erodes. The contest over who controls distribution logic will define media, culture, and commerce in the next cycle.

4. AI OPERATIONS AND COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

Anthropic accidentally leaked the source code for Claude Code.

What’s happening: Anthropic confirmed it had inadvertently published internal source code for Claude Code within a release package on the npm registry. A source map file pointed to a zip archive containing nearly 2,000 TypeScript files and more than 500,000 lines of code. The package was pulled within hours, but the code had already been widely mirrored, reaching over 84,000 GitHub stars before DMCA takedowns were issued. Anthropic attributed the exposure to a release packaging error. No customer data or credentials were involved. The incident came days after a separate accidental exposure of an internal blog post detailing an unreleased model known internally as Capybara.

TLDR:

• What leaked was not the model weights but the agentic harness: the orchestration layer that instructs Claude Code how to use tools, manage memory, and govern its behaviour. That layer is where Claude Code’s commercial distinctiveness lives.

• Claude Code had reached an annualised run-rate of $2.5 billion as of February, with enterprise accounting for 80% of revenue. The leak provides competitors with a detailed blueprint for one of the fastest-growing AI products on the market.

• The exposed code revealed an autonomous background mode called KAIROS and a three-layer memory architecture built to prevent agent confusion in long-running sessions. These are hard-won engineering decisions now in the open.

• This was the second accidental exposure in a week. The pattern points to process gaps where engineering velocity meets release infrastructure; not a structural security failure, but a material operational risk at scale.

• Code that reached 84,000 stars before removal has already circulated beyond containment. The legal response was fast. The practical containment was not.

Why it matters: For the enterprise AI buyers, frontier founders, and operators in our network who build on or compete with Anthropic’s tooling, this incident is worth reading as an operational signal rather than a security story. At the pace the leading AI companies are shipping, release hygiene is a material risk. What circulated was not just code but the architectural decisions that make Claude Code commercially distinctive; the orchestration logic that sits above the model and shapes how agents reason, remember, and act. Anthropic’s position remains strong, but the incident is a reminder that in AI, the infrastructure built around the model can be as strategically sensitive as the model itself.

5. AI STRATEGY AND PRODUCT

Sora shut down by OpenAI six months after launch.

What’s happening: OpenAI discontinued Sora, the AI video generator it launched in September 2025, along with the Sora API. The product peaked at roughly one million users before active users fell below 500,000. Video generation at scale was reportedly costing around $1 million per day in infrastructure against limited revenue. OpenAI is reallocating that compute toward coding tools, enterprise AI, and agentic systems. The Disney partnership, a three-year licensing agreement covering more than 200 characters across Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and Disney properties, together with a planned $1 billion Disney investment, collapsed. Disney was informed less than an hour before the public announcement.

TLDR:

• Six months from launch to discontinuation. Early App Store traction proved insufficient once retention and compute economics came into focus.

• Video generation operates on a fundamentally different cost curve from text. The infrastructure burden is heavier, the consumer monetisation logic weaker, and the path to margin far less forgiving.

• Disney’s $1 billion commitment was structured in stock warrants, not cash. The partnership carried public weight before it carried operational finality; a pattern worth noting for anyone tracking AI partnership announcements.

• The compute freed from Sora is being redirected toward enterprise, coding agents, and agentic systems. That reallocation is the signal, not the shutdown.

• Consumer AI products are now being held to product-market fit and margin discipline. The phase where demo quality and partnership announcements could sustain a product is ending.

Why it matters: For the founders, operators, and investors in our network evaluating AI product bets, Sora is not a cautionary tale about video. It is a data point about where the market’s tolerance has moved. The window in which novelty and launch momentum could carry a product through weak retention is closing. What replaces it is durability: whether the tool generates revenue at the compute cost it requires, whether users return, and whether the workflow it fits is real. OpenAI’s pivot toward enterprise and agentic systems is where the recurring revenue logic is strongest. The consumer AI layer is being filtered, not abandoned. The filters are getting sharper.

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Codes of Culture is the editorial and intelligence expression of Future+, a global network and strategic advisory firm spanning the US, Europe, the Middle East, and India. The brief: to decode the sy…

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