Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!
As a reminder, each week, every Friday, we’re sending out this overview of content in the Stratechery bundle; highlighted links are free for everyone. Additionally, you have complete control over what we send to you. If you don’t want to receive This Week in Stratechery emails (there is no podcast), please uncheck the box in your delivery settings.
Stratechery Plus will be on summer break next week; the next Update will be on July 7.
On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.
- AI and the Big Five. Back in 2023 I predicted how AI would affect Tech’s Big Five: Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. Two-and-a-half years on I revisit my predictions and take stock of where each company is at. If you haven’t followed along with all of our discussions about AI, this is a good primer about how things have evolved so far (and also listen to my interview with Bret Taylor where we discuss when and how big companies survive big changes like this). — Ben Thompson
- A Compelling Ruling on LLMs and the Fair Use Doctrine. Lest it be buried in the doldrums of late June, Wednesday’s Daily Update highlights a key ruling concerning the scope of the fair use doctrine and the future of LLM training. In short: Anthropic was accused (among other things) of infringing upon the intellectual property rights of authors whose books were purchased en masse and later digitized to train Anthropic LLMs. On Summary Judgment, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California sided with Anthropic when it comes to training: it’s fair use, and not a violation of copyright. Read the Update for an in-depth review of the decision, and listen to Sharp Tech for a discussion about how Congress should address some of the legal questions that remain unresolved in the wake of this ruling. Altogether, it’s a great read on an issue that remains very much a point of contention as the AI era unfolds. — Andrew Sharp
- NBA Salaries in Tech, and the Actual NBA. Here’s a two-part, basketball-related recommendation. First, Tuesday’s Daily Update uses the NBA to explain the rationale behind the ballooning salary numbers we’ve seen for recent hires at OpenAI and Meta, and why, in 2025, we’re finally seeing tech companies paying closer to fair market value for talent. Then, for those of you interested in actual basketball analysis, across two episodes this week the Greatest of All Talk podcast covered both Game 7 of the NBA Finals and the NBA Draft—a busy 96 hours! Come for stories of champagne corks and a restrained celebration after a surreal Game 7 in OKC, and stay for two hours of rollicking NBA offseason talk as Ben Golliver reports from the draft in New York City and we both celebrate the delightful return of teams making horrible decisions. The draft episode is free for everyoneand Stratechery subscribers have access to every episode of the GOAT as part of the bundle. — AS
Stratechery Articles and Updates
Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber
Asianometry with Jon Yu
Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop
Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and WaPo’s Ben Golliver
Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson
This week’s Sharp Tech video is on Apple showing its strengths at WWDC.
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