The OnePlus 13 didnt land alone. The exceptional flagship smartphone launched alongside the OnePlus 13R, which serves as a cheaper alternative at $599. While the look and feel will be similar to the OnePlus 13, the chipset, build, and cameras see some downgrades to keep the price low. But if youre not looking to have the absolute best of the best Android phones, the OnePlus 13R is a great option for those who still want ample performance and a gorgeous display. OnePlus 13R PhotosOnePlus 13R Design and FeaturesThe OnePlus 13R is built like a brick. Its neat, cleanly assembled, but a little bland next to the full-fat OnePlus 13. It gets flat aluminum edges with smoothly rounded corners, akin to what youll find on recent iPhones. The result is a phone thats stable on a table but that feels slightly thicker in my hands. Given its also a sizable phone at 6.37 x 2.98 x 0.31 in, it can be hard to manage in just one hand, though it's actually a little smaller in every dimension than the iPhone 16 Pro Max or OnePlus 13. For its size, its also relatively light at 7.27 ounces. Even if it's a little trim for a giant phone, youre still getting a huge 6.78-inch display. It may not be as sharp as its top-tier sibling, but it still hits a dense 450 pixels per inch with its 1264 x 2780 resolution. Thats plenty sharp for most uses. The OnePlus 13R also boasts a brilliant 120Hz LTPO AMOLED panel that can sink down into sublime darkness or blast out vivid highlights as bright as a rated 4500 nits. And the high brightness mode lets the display readily keep up in bright conditions for easy readability. For a budget model, the OnePlus 13R is packing a flagship-quality display. Movies and games look excellent on the display, and its variable refresh rate lets it drop down to low, battery-saving speeds when needed and then zip back up to 120Hz for ultra-smooth scrolling and navigation. The speakers combine well with the display, offering clear stereo sound and enough volume to listen to music or podcasts while taking a shower or cooking. Where the OnePlus 13 moved to an unfamiliar but competent Ceramic Guard glass for the screen, the OnePlus 13R gets Gorilla Glass 7i, which I also recently saw in action on the RedMagic 10 Pro. OnePlus ships the phone with a pre-applied screen protector, though, and that has held up to the everyday abuse well enough, seeing only minor blemishes. The waterproofing is not as robust here, with the phone only offering IP65. Thats enough for some splashing, but I wouldnt dunk this phone in water. Its possible OnePlus used strong protection but opted not to seek higher certification, but I wouldnt count on it. The OnePlus 13R features both face and fingerprint recognition. The face unlock is rather quick, but doesnt work well in poor lighting conditions. The fingerprint sensor is situated toward the bottom edge of the display, lower than on the OnePlus 13 and 12, making it a little hard to reach. Its quite snappy to unlock when pressed though.The rest of the OnePlus 13R is hard to tell apart from the OnePlus 13. The bottom edge is similarly lined with a dual SIM-card tray (eSIM is also supported), USB-C, a mic, and a speaker port. The top gets a small port to help with the earpiece speaker (though the OnePlus 13 had two such ports). Theres also an IR blaster to let the phone serve as a universal remote, and another mic at the top. The right edge includes a power button and volume keys that have a pleasingly stiff tactility. And the left edge includes OnePluss three-way notification slider. OnePlus 13R SoftwareAs with the OnePlus 13, the OnePlus 13R is promised to receive 4 years of OS updates and 6 years of security updates. Id love to see more, especially when Samsung and Google are making bigger promises, but its still pleasing to see OnePlus commit to this longer term support. That extra support also goes all that much further when OnePlus is offering it for this lower-cost model. It launched with Android 15, and OnePluss OxygenOS is a clean and flexible Android skin. Ive found it generally easy to navigate and customize. OnePlus 13R Gaming and PerformanceWhen I tested the RedMagic 9S Pro and OnePlus 12 last year, I was largely blown away by the performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip inside. While the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite has come for 2025s top-tier phones to push even further ahead, the OnePlus 13R continues to rely on the stalwart Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and it doesnt disappoint. The OnePlus 13R manages largely equivalent performance to the OnePlus 12, with many of its benchmark results sitting within a 0-2% difference. Impressively, the OnePlus 13R also manages its heat better with less performance decline over the 3DMark Steel Nomad Light stress test, which runs 20 tests in a row and generates a lot of heat in every phone Ive tested. In that stress test, the OnePlus 13R managed a high score of 1,698 points and a low of 1,203, providing 70.8% stability, this dominates phones like the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro and keeps the OnePlus 13R neck-and-neck with even the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro Max. In 3DMarks Wildlife Extreme and Solar Bay benchmarks, the OnePlus 13R even exceeds the latest iPhones. The OnePlus 13R also manages its heat well. While it does thermal throttle after running at full tilt for several minutes, it sinks down to a lower performance level that it proves capable of sustaining.All that performance makes for a quick and responsive phone. The OnePlus 13R never felt slow in my testing, readily launching apps and jumping between them, keeping up with busy webpages as I scrolled through them, and gaming like a champ. Even after a half-hour of playing Wuthering Waves with the settings maxed out, the phone kept churning out near-60fps frame rates. The surface of the phone saw some spots with temps reaching 106 degrees Fahrenheit, which isnt exactly comfortable, but the phone still wasnt painfully hot. The OnePlus 13R gets a 6,000mAh battery much like the OnePlus 13, but its a single-cell battery rather than dual-cell. The result is slower charging speeds, though 55W charging is hardly slow. Of course, with that large battery, the OnePlus 13R is happy to plug along all day even with heavy use, and Ive seen it easily hop along through two full days and into a third with lighter use. OnePlus 13R CamerasThe OnePlus 13R may have similar internals to the OnePlus 13 that came before it, but it unfortunately makes a handful of downgrades in the camera department to help keep its price down. Here are the cameras it packs:50MP wide, f/1.8, 1.0-micron, 1/1.56, OIS, EIS8MP ultrawide, f/2.2, 1.12-micron, 1/4, EIS50MP telephoto, 2x optical zoom, f/2.0, 0.64-micron, 1/2.75, EIS16MP Selfie, f/2.4, 1.0-micron, 1/3.09, Fixed Focus. 82-degree FOVThe OnePlus 13R has a strong start with its primary, wide-angle sensor. This captures lovely photos with plenty of detail, a nice warm color, and pronounced background blur that lets you avoid using artificial portrait modes. OnePlus 13R Camera SamplesUnfortunately, OnePlus didnt do as good a job getting the three rear sensors to match one anothers visual quality. Taking one photo with each sensor from the same spot, they exhibit distinct color differences. The main sensor provides natural color, while the ultra-wide adds a little extra warmth with a yellowish tint. The 2x telephoto is simply drab by comparison to either, seeming to brighten up shots more than necessary.The 2x telephoto proves its value when zooming in on photos. Between its high resolution sensor and extra zoom, it manages to get more detail at range than the main sensor. It would have been great to see even more zoom range, especially as the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 13 both offer 3x telephoto sensors. Still, the 2x sensor is better to have than not.The ultra-wide is a bit more contentious. Its low resolution makes images look fairly soft when viewed closely. It may capture more scenery and be sharp enough for sharing from phone to phone, but it simply comes up lacking in detail when viewed on a computer monitor.Selfies are vibrant and largely crisp. Some finer details wind up a bit soft when zoomed in on, such as facial hair. But overall, the selfies look great even when blown up on a large monitor.One area the OnePlus 13R trims features from the full-fat models is in video recording. The OnePlus 13 was quite impressive with its 4K/60 Dolby Vision capabilities. While the OnePlus 13R can record in 4K/60, it cant do so with ultra-steady stabilization enabled. It also lacks HDR video recording of any sort. Any recording above 1080p/30 also appears restricted to the main sensor no high-resolution, high-frame-rate recording with the telephoto sensor.Purchasing GuideThe OnePlus 13R is available now for $599. It is only available with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage (except in India). You get your choice of two colors: Nebula Noir (matte black) and Astral Trail (an etched white).

Welcome toIndie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If youre a developer and would like your app featured, getin contact.Due Tomorrow is a students ultimate homework companion. It helps you manage your assignments, keep track of everything with reminders and calendar integration, and includes a neat little AI chatbot that provides pointers for your assignments.Top featuresFirst things first, Due Tomorrow is a homework manager. You can input tasks, jot down notes for that task, and add any sort of relevant links youd need for that assignment. On top of that, you can also add sub-tasks, allowing you to break your homework down into smaller pieces.Thats not all though. It also offers integration with Google Classroom and Canva, allowing for easy imports of assignments without much additional effort. As mentioned earlier, it offers reminders to help keep students on top of assignments, but it also has calendar integration. You can quickly set up calendar blocks to dedicate time to completing your assignments.Last but not least, it offers an AI chatbot called Homework Helper, where you can upload images of your homework, and itll provide resources to help you out. It sources from websites like Khan Academy, so you can learn what you need to know, rather than just giving students the answers.The app also integrates with Siri and Apple Intelligence.Pricing & DownloadDue Tomorrow is available for free on the App Store, and the developer is committed to not paywalling anything thats integral to homework management. However, for Homework Helper, youll need to purchase a subscription for $2.99/month or $19.99/year. Theres also a tip jar if youd like to support the developer.My favorite iPhone accessories on Amazon:Follow Michael:X/Twitter,Bluesky,InstagramAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Apple Vision Pro only just turned a year old, and it may be about to get its biggest update yet no new hardware required.Thats because Apple Intelligence is finally rumored to be coming to Apple Vision Pro. When Apple announced its suite of AI features last June, it only promised support on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. So far, Apple Intelligence is offered on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16 Pro; M-series iPad Pro and iPad Air; the latest iPad mini; and M-series Macs. Apple never guaranteed that Apple Intelligence would come to Vision Pro in a future update.As I mentioned a few days ago: The biggest opportunity for Apple Vision Pro, aside from price and weight, is that it runs on Apples second generation M-series processor and doesnt support Apple Intelligence.Its possible, however, that Apple could bring Apple Intelligence to the existing Apple Vision Pro without refreshing the hardware. The hardware onlyjust turned a year oldin the United States, and it has been arriving in markets over the last 12 months.However, a new rumor from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg suggests, for the first time, that the existing Apple Vision Pro will indeed receive Apples AI features. If true, this will be a welcome surprise for customers of the $3500 headset.Its also a welcome rumor following the report that three new Siri features with Apple Intelligence may not be ready in time for iOS 18.4.Stay tuned as we expect a lot of Apple news in the coming days, including a new product launch on Wednesday that Apple has already announced.Best Apple accessoriesFollow Zac Hall on X, Threads, and Bluesky, and listen to Runtime with co-host Sophia Tung on Apple Podcasts and YouTube.Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

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Time flies when you're floating aimlessly through the cold, inhospitable wasteland that is space. And it's already been seven years since SpaceXtest-launched its powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, shooting founder Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster into space. The cherry-red sports car is still out there after taking off on Feb. 6, 2018, and even suffered from a recent case of mistaken identity when astronomers thought it might be an asteroid.A lot has happened since 2018. Musk turned Twitter into X. Tons of Starship development. Tons of Falcon 9 launches. Some more Falcon Heavy launches. Through it all, the red car and a mannequin named Starman have been in orbit around the sun.Tesla Roadster as near-Earth object Upgrade your inbox Get cnet insider From talking fridges to iPhones, our experts are here to help make the world a little less complicated. Musk's car was accidentally and briefly classified as an asteroid in 2025. The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center issued a bulletin on Jan. 2 announcing 2018 CN41 as a newly discovered near-Earth object. NEOs include asteroids and comets.The MPC issued a follow-up notice on Jan. 3, saying, "The next day it was pointed out the orbit matches an artificial object 2018-017A, Falcon Heavy Upper stage with the Tesla Roadster. The designation 2018 CN41 is being deleted and will be listed as omitted."New space objects are discovered all the time. It's important work. Astronomers aim to find and track asteroids that could potentially hit Earth. The MPC has cataloged over 37,500 NEOs, with 190 so far in January alone. The Roadster slipped through the cracks for a flash in time. It shows how a human-made object can resemble a natural one. Where in space is the Tesla Roadster?Where exactly is the car now? There's a handy website that'll show you. Enlarge Image Whereisroadster.com tracks the location of Elon Musk's car in space. This map is from Jan. 28, 2025. The Roadster's path is in green. Ben Pearson/Whereisroadster.comWhereisroadster.com has been in operation since 2018, tracking the car on its journey through space. Created by Ben Pearson, the site follows the car's location and calculates the distance it's traveled. As it nears its seventh anniversary in space, the Roadster has "driven" around 3.5 trillion miles.It takes the car about 557 days to orbit the sun. According to Pearson's work, the Tesla has exceeded its 36,000-mile warranty by over 96,330 times. The car famously pumped out David Bowie's song Space Oddity at the start of its journey. If the battery and speakers were still working, the on-board mannequin would have heard Bowie's masterpiece over 692,000 times. Talk about an earworm.Researchers had already looked into the chances of the car hitting Earth some day, and calculated the odds at just 6% within 1 million years. The team also worked out that the Roadster will make a close(ish) encounter with Earth in 2091, when it will come within a couple hundred thousand miles of the planet where it was made.Space is a harsh place, so it's likely the Roadster and its pilot are pretty roughed up at this point. What will be its ultimate fate? It could be doomed to wander the solar system, or perhaps we'll go fetch it someday and put it in a museum. Anyone want a lightly used, well-traveled electric car?

Sony's live-service shooter Fairgame$ has been delayed to next year, insider suggestsA heist for sore eyes. News by Vikki Blake Contributor Published on Feb. 15, 2025 Fairgame$ - the heist shooter from Jade Raymond's new studio, Haven - has allegedly been delayed.Whilst we don't know much about the live-service game other than it was expected later this year and is in development for PC and PlayStation 5, Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb revealed during the Game Mess Decides podcast that the release had slipped to 2026.Haven announces heist shooter Fairgame$.Watch on YouTubeGrubb didn't offer any explanations as to why the project may have fallen behind schedule, but said it was unlikely to make an appearance "this year"."No Fairgame$ this year," Grubb said, "Fairgame$, as far as Im aware, has been pushed to 2026."Back in February 2022, Sony stated it aimed to launch over 10 new live service games over the coming years. A month later, then-Sony exec Jim Ryan said he believed live service games were a key part of gaming's future, confident in PlayStation's live service push.However, since then, the company has been pulling back on this vision, with several proposed projects cancelled, including two just last month, thought to be one from Days Gone developer Bend and one from Bluepoint.Despite being in development for for eight years, Sony's 5v5 sci-fi shooter Concord was taken offline just two weeks after its PC and PS5 debut last year, following a lackluster launch and weak sales.Numerous other live service games have also been cancelled by Sony, including London Studio's co-op game, with the studio also shut down last year. In 2023, Naughty Dog cancelled its standalone multiplayer game set in the world of The Last of Us, and a live service Twisted Metal project at Firespite was similarly cancelled along with a co-operative live service Spider-Man game from developer Insomniac entitled Spider-Man: The Great Web.We've reached out to Sony for comment and will update as and when we hear back.

A Manhattan Federal Court judge on Friday extended the temporary restraining order that bars staffers from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency from accessing US Treasury Department datawhich attorneys general from New York and other blue states have slammed as an unlawful threat to privacywhile she considers whether to impose a longer-term injunction.After hearing some two hours of arguments, Judge Jeannette A. Vargas told lawyers for New York and allied states, and their opponents from the Department of Justice, I do find good cause to extend the TRO as modified. Vargas said she would soon issue her decision, but not today, to give the court time to consider the issues.While the proceeding largely maintained the status quo, it also lifted the veil on just how little is known about DOGEs access to informationand where it went.When Vargas asked Jeffrey Oestericher, the Justice Department attorney representing Trump, on Friday whether any DOGE-accessed information had been shared outside of the Treasury Department, he said: The short answer on that is we dont presently know.Were performing a forensic analysis. What we can tell from the forensic analysis thus far is there were emails sent outside Treasury, Oestericher said. We do not know [the] content.Vargas asked: Wasnt this problematic from a privacy standpoint?The short answer is no, Oestericher said.During this time that the DOGE team members had access to this information, there were extensive mitigation efforts in place to prevent this precise harm.But Oestericher admitted at another point, We candidly admit that there was some measure of increased risk, but we took all appropriate mitigation measures to mitigate that risk as much as possible.Vargas decision came six days after New York and allied litigants were granted a temporary restraining order that ultimately prohibited the Treasury Department from giving DOGE hires and special government employees access to sensitive data and computer systems. Donald Trump tapped Elon Musk to head DOGE, an agency the president created under the auspices of rooting out fraud and governmental wastedespite a dearth of evidence indicating fraud.In issuing that temporary restraining order early February 8, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said that the states suing Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief.Engelmayer noted that Treasurys new policy, enacted at Trumps direction, appears to allegedly [expand] access to the paytment systems of the Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) to political appointees and special government employees.This, Engelmayer reasoned, represented a risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.Engelmayer also said in his written decision that the states suing over Treasurys policy change have shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their claims, with the States statutory claims presenting as particularly strong.The complaint against Trump and Bessent repeatedly cited WIREDs reporting that revealed how a 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, with ties to Musk, enjoyed read and write access to two Treasury Department systems responsible for virtually all payments made by the federal government. Tom Krausewho is on the DOGE team despite being CEO of Cloud Software Groupwas also granted access to these capabilities.

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week were looking at OpenAI canceling the release of o3; TikTok returning to U.S. app stores nearly a month after it was removed; more complications in Elon Musks bid to buy OpenAI for $97.4 billion; and more! Lets do it.OpenAI effectively canceled the release of o3, which was slated to be the companys next major AI model, in favor of a simplified product offering. In a post on X, CEO Sam Altman said OpenAI plans to release GPT-5, a model that will integrate o3 in ChatGPT and its API. As a result, OpenAI will no longer launch o3 as a stand-alone model. The company plans to release GPT-4.5 before GPT-5 rolls out, according to Altman, who says this will be the companys last non-chain-of-thought model.Apple and Google restored TikTok to their respective app stores in the U.S., nearly a month after they removed the app due to a national security law that banned it. The companies have also restored video editor CapCut and social media app Lemon8, which were removed to comply with the law. The apps were restored after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent Apple a letter saying that the ban wouldnt immediately be enforced, Bloomberg reports.Apple CEO Tim Cook teased the newest member of the family, set to arrive Wednesday, which is likely a fourth-generation iPhone SE. Its been three years since Apple released the last iPhone SE at $429 an oversight for a product that plays such a big role for the company in markets like China and India. This time around, Apple is likely to ditch the Touch ID home button and use the same chip that powers the iPhone 16.This is TechCrunchs Week in Review, where we recap the weeks biggest news. Want this delivered as a newsletter to your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.NewsImage Credits:Tatiana Lavrova (opens in a new window) / Getty ImagesMusk adds conditions to his bid for OpenAI: Lawyers for Elon Musk said the billionaire will withdraw his $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI if the board commits to keeping it as a nonprofit. The filing claims that Musks offer to buy OpenAI is serious. Read moreIf you cant take the heat: Metas CTO Andrew Bosworth has choice words for employees frustrated with the companys latest policies they are free to quit. A Business Insider report cites an internal chat where an employee criticized Meta for cutting DEI programs. Read moreTesla wins a defamation suit: Zhang Yazhou sued Tesla after a Tesla Model 3 allegedly crashed due to faulty brakes in 2021. After Tesla sued her back for defamation, a Chinese court has ordered Zhang to pay some $23,000 in damages and make a public apology. Read moreAn open Instagram: An app called Pinksky launched an Android version of its photo-centric social networking experience built on top of Bluesky. Its one of many attempting to court former Instagram users by offering a similar experience but built on open technology. Read moreWatch out, FIFA: Researchers at Google DeepMind published a demonstration of miniature humanoid robots playing a one-on-one game of soccer. The researchers found they were able to learn movement skills like walking, kicking, and being able to recover from a fall. Read moreGoogle expands NotebookLM Plus: Google has expanded NotebookLM Plus, a paid version of its AI-based note-taking and research assistant with higher usage limits and premium features, to users subscribed to the Google One AI Premium plan. Read moreZetas big valuation: The provider of banking software to banks and fintech startups raised $50 million from a strategic investor at a $2 billion valuation. The new investment marks a 70% increase in the Bengaluru-based startups valuation in 2021. Read moreGoogle Maps updates to the Gulf of America: U.S. Google Maps users will see the Gulf of America instead of the Gulf of Mexico following an executive order from President Trump. International users will see both names, while users in Mexico will only see the Gulf of Mexico. Read morePerplexitys Super Bowl growth hack: Instead of getting an expensive Super Bowl ad, the AI search engine used X to get users to download its app for a chance to win $1 million. The strategy increased its mobile app installs by roughly 50%, according to data from Appfigures. Read moreTumblr joins the fediverse: Tumblr is headed to the open social web thanks to a planned move to the WordPress infrastructure. When the migration is complete, Tumblr users will be able to federate their blog via ActivityPub, just as every WordPress.com user can. Read more

Many venture industry observers have wondered whether Andreessen Horowitz, a firm that manages $45 billion, has its sights on eventually becoming a publicly traded company.Co-founder Marc Andreessen said he isnt chomping at the bit to take the firm public, on this weeks Invest Like the Best podcast. But he discussed his goal of building a16z into an enduring company, drawing inspiration from JP Morgan and publicly traded private equity firms.Historically, venture capital firms have been partnerships consisting of a small tribe of people sitting in a room together, trying to bounce ideas off of each other when they make investments, Andreessen said on the podcast.The problem with the partnership model, he said, is that its highly dependent on the ideas and expertise of those people at the table with no underlying asset value, as he described it. Once the original partners retire, the firm loses a lot of its value, even if a new generation of investors takes over.But even if they can keep it going, theres no underlying asset value. That next generation is just going to have to hand it off to the third generation, he said. Thats probably going to fail on the third generation. Its going to be on Wikipedia someday: that firm existed, and then it went away.The partnership model can be lucrative. A16zs billions under management generates sizable money management fees for the firm, in addition to profits made when its investments succeed.However, Andreessen said he constantly reminds internal staff and limited partners that the company isnt raising money just to harvest the fees. Its to give the company the cash to invest in growing companies.When we go for scale, its because we think its necessary to support the kinds of companies we want to help our founders build, he said.Andreessen says his bigger goal for a16z is to create a company that lasts. An alternative to a partnership is to build an investment company thats managed like a business, which means it has management, multiple layers of staff, division of labor with specializations, and training programs, Andreessen said.There are certainly precedents of small partnerships evolving into large corporations, which Andreessen can use as a model for a16zs ambitions.Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, 100 years ago, looked like little venture capital firms, he said.Then their leaders, over time, turned them into huge franchises and big public companies.He named other examples, too, of private partnerships turned into large publicly traded companies like big private equity firms. Blackstone, which now has a market capitalization of over $200 billion, went public in 2007. Apollo, KKR, and Carlyle held their IPOs soon after Blackstone, and TPG listed on Nasdaq in early 2022.Andreessen argues that as these companies grew from partnerships into large corporations, their long-term success became less dependent on a few key investors.A big part of what weve been trying to do is build something that has that kind of enduring aspect to it, he said.In many ways, Andreessen Horowitz already looks more like an operating company than many VC firms. A16z has dozens of people in its marketing group and large teams that help portfolio companies recruit talent and sell their products. The firm runs separate crypto, bio and health, and American dynamism strategies.But maybe theres another reason Andreessen is keen to restructure away from the classic VC system. When it comes to partnerships, he says, It actually turns out in most cases, what you discover is that people actually dont like each other that much.Topics

AI opens up new worldsgettyTheres a great deal of discussion about the impact of cheap, ubiquitous artificial intelligence (AI) on productivity, which, overall, can be a good thing. But as with any emerging technology, there are unpredictable innovations that can emerge as well things that may had not been possible without the technology especially as it gets cheaper and more accessible.Recently, I canvassed industry thinkers and doers about innovations they see arising because of AI.For example, Real Entrepreneur Women, a career coaching service, has developed an AI coach called Skye. Skye is designed to help female coaches cut through overwhelm by providing actionable strategies and personalized support to grow their businesses, said founder Sophie Musumeci. Shes like having a dedicated business strategist in your pocket streamlining decision-making, creating tailored content, and helping clients stay consistent. Its AI with heart, designed to scale human connection in industries where trust and relationships are everything.In the next few years, Musumeci predicted, I see democratized AI creating new business models where the gap between big and small players closes entirely, giving more entrepreneurs the confidence and capability to thrive.Education is another area ripe for AI disruption, and its possibilities for hyper-personalization in learning. The current education system in USA is designed to educate the masses, said Andy Thurai, principle analyst with Constellation Research. It assumes everyone is at the same skill level and same interest in areas of topic and same expertise. It tries to push the information down our throats, and forces us to learn in a certain way."AI can serve to help students learn at their own pace, and not either be pressured not to fall behind, or be held back by slower learners. By applying specific speed and knowledge, which some advanced charter and magnet skills do, AI can customer create education both knowledge as well speed and velocity of delivery that is suitable for a specific individual. at their specific speed of understanding and learning, said Thurai.MORE FOR YOUSome people might need more visual, demonstrations, and explanations to understand things and certain people might understand the topic matter just with a few lines of text, he continued. "AI can individualize the same topic but in a different consumable way. This hyper personalization can potentially educate everyone in a way they can consume, and understand and at a speed that they can handle.Speaking of education, Forrest Zeisler, co-founder and chief technology officer at Jobber, suggested that ubiquitous, cheap AI may even make the need to attend business school and earn an MBA obsolete.Instead, AI will be picking up all the administrative tasks business, freeing up business leaders to let their creativity flourish. More than that, Zeisler added, AI will serve as a business coach, providing small business owners with credible expert advice. This will be especially beneficial for entrepreneurs. Their services will be more distinguishable to large enterprises, allowing them to stay open 24/7 and compete with big organizations."Komninos Chatzipapas, founder at HeraHaven.AI, even goes as far to predict the rise of small autonomous AI companies with no humans evolved. Run entirely by self-updating algorithms, theyd handle all aspects of their business including accounting, sales, and even paying taxes.Likewise. Adnan Masood, chief AI architect at UST. also foresees AI, Inc.," which will feature pop-up ventures that form, pivot, and dissolve in mere months, all leveraging DeepSeeks style open-source and its compute frugality.Whats happening is investors will be funding these ephemeral teams to solve narrowly defined problems knowing they can do so without monstrous GPU compute bills, Masood said. The upshot is a faster, cheaper, more creative wave of business models than weve seen before, fueled by advanced multi-token prediction that cuts inference costs and paves the way for hyper-personalization at scale.Personalization in healthcare even AI-driven personal doctors is another area of innovation springing out of AI. As AI becomes cheap, accessible, and capable of human-like reasoning, were on the verge of hyper-personalized experiences that were previously impossible," said Vincent Koc, lecturer at University of New South Wales. Im working on precision health use cases with medical companies in the US and Australia, where AI is synthesizing patient data: food, lifestyle, genetics, medical history, into a real-time, personalized healthcare experience.Personalized AI-driven is more than chatbots; its about creating an AI-driven personal doctor that clinicians can augment rather than replace, Koc predicted.Beyond healthcare, imagine that level of hyper-personalization in fashion, interior design, or even financial planning, Koc added. "Your wardrobe, your furniture, and even your investment strategy could be uniquely tailored to you in ways that feel almost handcrafted.The workplace of the future "might feel less like a fixed schedule and more like a continuous, intelligent conversation with your AI team, he added.