A newsletter by Ken Yeung

The AI
Economy

A sharp, curated look at the stories that reveal how AI is rewriting business, work, technology, and culture.

What you get

Built for people who work with AI, not just read about it.

Reported, not aggregated

Enterprise AI coverage from a journalist who covered the space before “generative AI” was a mainstream phrase. Sourced, contextual, with a point of view.

Platform strategy focus

Beyond the product announcements. Analysis of how AI is restructuring enterprise workflows, editorial operations, and the economics of content at scale.

Written for practitioners

Not for the hype-chasers. For the people who have to act on it.

Archive

Every issue.

All issues published to date. New issues arrive every week.

Open on Substack ↗
  1. Issue

    8 in 10 Workers Are Still Doing AI’s Job for It

    IN THIS ISSUE: New Workday research reveals that most employees are still spending their days manually bridging broken systems, even as AI adoption spreads. Then, a new Gallup survey finds most Americans don’t want AI data centers in their backyards, putting a number on the public resistance threatening the industry’s $700 billion infrastructure push. The […]

  2. Issue

    ServiceNow and Nvidia Want to Make Desktop AI Agents Safe Enough for the Enterprise

    For years, enterprises have struggled to govern AI where it actually runs, across clouds, tools, and now, increasingly, the desktops where employees do their work. ServiceNow thinks it has an answer, and it’s building the solution with Nvidia. Project Arc is the result: an enterprise desktop agent designed to bring autonomous capabilities seen in tools […]

  3. Issue

    AWS Is Trying to Make Kiro the Most Trustworthy AI Coding Tool in the Room

    In software development, the costliest mistake rarely lives in the code. It lives in the requirements that came before it. Typically, the issue arose because a developer interpreted the specs differently from the author—and that’s human-to-human. Imagine how much more challenging this can be when vibe-coding. That’s why Amazon Web Services (AWS) is updating its […]

  4. Issue

    Glean Wants Enterprises to Treat AI Agents Like Software—With a Full Development Lifecycle to Match

    Enterprises have spent the past year building AI agents. Now they have to figure out what to do with them. To help, Glean has released its Enterprise Agent Development Lifecycle (ADLC), a framework that gives Chief Information Officers and IT leaders a repeatable path to scale agents across their organizations. “Agents are software. They need […]

  5. Issue

    ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower Lands Inside Amazon Bedrock Agentcore

    Enterprises that have gone the build-your-own route with agentic AI—picking their own models and standing up their own agent infrastructure on platforms like Amazon Bedrock AgentCore—have had to figure out governance themselves. ServiceNow is offering them a shortcut. The company on Wednesday connected its AI Control Tower with AgentCore, giving customers a single layer to […]

  6. Issue

    Seattle Has an AI Action Plan. Will Anyone Actually Sign It?

    IN THIS ISSUE: Seattle has the cloud giants, the clean energy, and the talent pipeline. What it has lacked is a coherent plan to turn those assets into AI leadership. This week, we examine the WTIA’s latest strategic framework—and whether its voluntary flywheel model can actually move a region that has long struggled to coordinate […]

  7. Issue

    Twilio’s Ola Is the Communication Layer That Tells AI Agents No

    As the AI industry builds agents with greater capabilities and freedom to do what they want, Twilio is choosing to build the layer that decides whether they should. On Thursday, the communications infrastructure platform unveiled Ola, a tool that lets people approve or block actions taken by their AI agents on their behalf. Created by […]

  8. Issue

    Ai2 Brings $152M Federally Backed AI Computing Cluster Online

    The Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) said Thursday that its federally backed AI computing cluster is now online, marking the first milestone of a $152 million program to build open AI models for scientific research. The project, called the Open Multimodal AI Infrastructure for Science (NSF OMAI), is backed by the U.S. National Science Foundation […]

  9. Issue

    AWS Gives AI Agents the Authority to Spend With AgentCore Payments

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) is building the infrastructure that lets AI agents transact on behalf of humans—with their consent, of course. At its Financial Services Symposium on Thursday, the company unveiled AgentCore Payments, a set of features within Amazon Bedrock that lets AI agents access and pay for the resources they use. Built with Coinbase […]

  10. Issue

    Atlassian Bets That Context-Rich Agents Beat Context-Blind Ones

    When Atlassian introduced Rovo AI in 2024, it wasn’t running solely on a foundation model. It was drawing on the Teamwork Graph, the company’s structured map of how people, teams, projects, and decisions connect across an organization, built over more than two decades of enterprise use. That context layer is what Atlassian said set Rovo […]

Peer review

What the AIs say.*

We asked the leading AI tools to weigh in on The AI Economy. Their ratings speak for themselves. (Results may vary depending on training data and general disposition toward newsletters.)

Claude — Anthropic

★★★★★

5.0

out of 5

“[Its] strength lies in its ability to cover both technical developments and business implications of AI, making it valuable for a wide audience ranging from tech enthusiasts to business executives.”

ChatGPT — OpenAI

★★★★★

5.0

out of 5

“Expertly combines in-depth interviews and industry analysis, making it a must-read for AI enthusiasts and professionals.”

Gemini — Google

★★★★★

5.0

out of 5

“Provides valuable insights and analysis, making it a great resource for anyone interested in AI.”

Copilot — Microsoft

★★★★★

5.0

out of 5

“A sharp, reporter‑caliber intelligence brief for the AI era—fast, authoritative, and genuinely ahead of the curve.”

* Disclaimer: My newsletter has not been actually endorsed by OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic. I solicited reviews from their respective gen AI services. Sounded cool though, huh?

Questions

Common questions.

  1. What is The AI Economy?

    A newsletter covering consumer and enterprise AI, platform strategy, and the companies reshaping how work gets done. Reported, not aggregated — written by a technology journalist who has covered the space since before generative AI was a mainstream phrase.

  2. How often does it publish?

    No fixed schedule—just coverage when something worth your attention happens. Plus, there's a Friday news roundup that's published exclusively on LinkedIn.

  3. Is it free?

    Yes. Every issue is free. Subscribe on Substack and it arrives in your inbox. No paywall, no premium tier. If that changes, subscribers will be notified well in advance.

  4. How is this different from other AI newsletters?

    Most AI newsletters cover product announcements and funding rounds. The AI Economy focuses on the downstream effects: how enterprise teams are actually deploying AI, where the editorial and operational models are breaking down, and what platform-level shifts mean for practitioners making decisions this quarter. It is written for people doing the work, not watching it from the outside.

  5. Where can I read past issues?

    The full archive is listed above on this page. All issues are also available on Substack. The plan is to host the canonical archive here on thelettertwo.com as the publication grows — independent of any platform.

  6. Can I republish or cite content from the newsletter?

    Yes, with attribution. Short excerpts with a link back to the original issue are fine. For longer republication or syndication, reach out via LinkedIn.

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