Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson

Parsing the latest reports on the battle for the NBA's next round of broadcast rights, a question about the NBA schedule and how the league should think about competing with the NFL, and the implications of an increasingly bleak outlook for regional sports networks.

Ben proposes a potential update to Clayton Christensen's theory of disruption, why the latest round of Meta market skepticism is not as crazy as the last few episodes, questions about Facebook and Apple, and an emailer wonders whether Uber is the future aggregator for transportation and beyond.

Why TikTok makes more sense for Wal-Mart and Amazon than Oracle and Microsoft, and the FTC's ban on noncompete agreements prompts reflections noncompetes in Silicon Valley and the decline of trust across society. At the end: A question about Bluey and purchasing power for streamers, and an update on Drake's AI freestyle.

A closer look at Netflix after news that the streamer will stop reporting subscription numbers in 2025, a question about Meta’s AI ambitions, and the case for Google making a play to compete with the iPhone. At the end: Drake’s use of AI Tupac in a rap battle.

Celebrating 10 years of Stratechery as a subscription business with 10 questions about analysis, creating on the Internet, what's coming with AI, and what it was like on day 1.

The advertising possibilities that AI can unlock for Meta, Google and Amazon, why TikTok is interested in AI to create digital influencers, and looking to past technologies to predict the impact that AI will make on the economy. At the end: Two questions about chips, a story about EVs and British mechanics, and Scrabble.

Andrew and Ben turn to the emailers and answer questions on Jony Ive's post-Apple adventures, structural parallels between tech and the rise of journalists Shams Charania and Adrian Wojnarowski, Instagram's strategy for Reels, the information environment surrounding Neuralink, and the best approach to solving age verification for teenagers.

Updated thoughts on Amazon rolling back “just walk out” in grocery stores, context for a viral Meta tweet and a year of pessimism surrounding TSMC in Arizona, and Ben walks through what happened with the XZ backdoor and the changes that should come next.

Ben reviews Apple’s latest immersive video demo, what a paucity of VR content says about Apple’s commitment to the AVP, Microsoft’s move to globalize its response to EU regulators, and various thoughts and questions on energy consumption and its role in an AI future.

Follow-up on Apple and the DOJ, including new antitrust laws Ben would like to see, distinctions between platforms and aggregators in a regulatory context, and both sides of the Apple API argument. At the end: attempts to bridge antitrust confusion and a rant on Boeing’s CEO search.

A closer look at the US v. Apple complaint, including the good and bad of the introductory rhetoric, debate over the notion that consumers have co-signed Apple's control of the app store, text messaging technology, smartwatches, what Apple has always offered consumers, and the strategic decisions that made the company an attractive antitrust target.

An AI day for Sharp Tech. Topics include: Nvidia’s GTC and the Blackwell B200 GPU, Nvidia’s strategic calculus after achieving product market fit, whether Google missed a chance to market TPUs to a wider audience, the logic underlying Microsoft’s bizarre arrangement with Inflection AI, and Apple’s rumored talks about a partnership with Google Gemini.

A closer look at Meta's strategy with WhatsApp, why Disney's failure to buy Google in 1999 shouldn't be surprising, Apple's doomed car project and attendant AI ambitions, and a question about the New York Times spawns discussion of the podcast industry, in general.

A look at Reddit’s business as well as the company’s message board DNA, examining some of the opposition to this week’s TikTok legislation, and at the end, identifying the company that should buy TikTok.

The latest legislative push to address TikTok’s relationship to ByteDance, Ben’s 2020 analysis of the threats posed by the app, the arguments and interests opposing a ban, and why US freedoms may ultimately be the best defense against a foreign influence campaign.

A closer look at Elon Musk’s lawsuit, why it will probably fail, and the OpenAI concerns Musk highlights that remain relevant. Then: Apple’s latest App Store crusade, some amateur psychology, and an emailer’s Google observation yields a Microsoft history lesson.

The challenges posed by AI as aggregators like Meta and Google deploy models around the around, why personalized LLM output might be a long term solution, and reactions to the latest release from Anthropic and the current pace of AI progress. At the end: A word about Perplexity.

The letter from Sundar Pichai in the wake of a Gemini’s disastrous week, the relationship between TSMC and Nvidia (and why Intel is part of the conversation), and an emailer asks Ben to compare Apple’s now-abandoned car ambitions with Google’s investment in Waymo. At the end: A Vision Pro question and a new Formula One season.

An email about AI losers spawns a check-in on the AI efforts of the big five, Google’s Gemini rollout prompts a history lesson and questions about the culture, while the debates over Gemini highlight the limits of chatbots and signal another step toward bifurcation between the physical and virtual world.

How the gaming market went from PlayStation to Microsoft Game Pass, the fundamental tensions underlying Microsoft’s current strategy in games, and thoughts on the future for Sony and Meta’s Quest 3 as a gaming console.