July Was Insane for Tech. Here’s the Only Recap You Need.

Hi there, here's the tech drama recap for July:
In today’s edition:

🧑‍💼 One guy “worked” at 15 YC startups at once — said it was to make ends meet
💸 OpenAI tries to buy Windsurf for $3B, Satya kills the deal, Google grabs founders for $2.4B
🤖 Devin hires 250 devs to replace its own AI engineers
🧠 LLMs can’t reach AGI: no memory, no logic, just vibes
🌐 Everyone pivoted from AI dev tools to AI browsers
🛡 Cluely helps you cheat, Truely catches you — virus vs. antivirus era begins
💰 Tech salaries explode: Zuck drops $100M, Google drops billions
🤠 YC startup steals a clone of a clone and says “we built it in 4 days”
🧬 Ilya Sutskever runs a $32B company solo with zero revenue
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The July Tech Drama Recap
(you’re welcome — this saves you 3 weeks of doomscrolling)

1. The new tech antihero
Some dude "worked" at 15 YC-backed startups at the same time.
When caught, he said it was to "make ends meet."
Either he’s got 500 kids or India got real expensive.
Instantly became a meme next to Hawk Tuah girl, "$20M ARR in 7 hours" bro & Bonny Blue.

2. The biggest drama of the year:

• OpenAI buys Windsurf for $3B

• Satya Nadella (real OpenAI boss) cancels the deal to protect VS Code & Copilot

• Google hires the Windsurf founders for $2.4B

• Devin scoops up the remaining 250 engineers to replace its own AI devs

3. LLMs won't get us to AGI

• No real memory or reasoning

• Just mimicking logic, not understanding

• Janky tool calling

• Limited context window

• Can’t edit past tokens

• Just... probabilities, not intelligence

4. From AI coding tools → AI browsers
June: everyone builds AI dev tools
July: now everyone’s making AI browsers
Perplexity, OpenAI, Anthropic (soon)...
They all think they can win the war because they control browsers, search, models, apps, and compute.
(aka the "RIP Google" phase)

5. Virus vs. Antivirus era has started
Roy drops out of Columbia to build Cluely — AI that helps you cheat
A week later, someone builds Truely — an open-source AI that catches people using Cluely
We're entering the AI cat-and-mouse phase

6. Tech salaries are wild
Zuck hiring people on $100M/year deals
Google paid $2.4B for Windsurf’s team
This might just be the new normal™

7. Silicon Valley = Wild West now:

• a16z funds an AI cheating tool

• Soham drops a clone called "Cheating Daddy"

• A YC startup steals it and rebrands it: “built it in 4 days” 💀

8. Ilya Sutskever goes solo
Now CEO, CTO & CSO of SSI
$32B AI startup
No product. No revenue. No team.
He probably built AGI and fired everyone.

9. Grok 4 is the smartest AI ever… until next month
Elon showed up late, but caught up fast.
Still waiting on a "make a viral tweet" or "actually make me laugh" benchmark —
because every AI model sucks at both.

10. SpaceX invested $2B in xAI
Elon just moved money from one pocket to the other.

11. Meanwhile at Amazon:

• Their model sucks

• Their AI IDE sucks

• Alexa still sucks

• Alexa's new launch got delayed
  But hey — Bezos is busy honeymooning.

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