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.

Ken Yeung

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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

    Adobe Brings Photoshop, Firefly, Express, and Other Pro Tools Into Slack

    Adobe is continuing its effort to bring Creative Cloud to where its users are. The company announced on Wednesday that it has brought more than 70 pro-grade tools from its creative and productivity suites, including Firefly, Express, Photoshop, Premiere, Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator, Stock, Lightroom, and more, into Slack. When users install Adobe for Slack, they […]
  2. Issue

    Glean Bets the Enterprise AI Fight Will Be Won on Context

    An AI agent that doesn’t know your company burns money trying to prove it. That’s the argument Glean is making as it pitches why context is critical to the success of any enterprise AI program. At its annual customer conference, Glean:GO, in San Francisco this past week, that was the only thing the company wanted […]
  3. Issue

    Ai2’s AutoDiscovery Flags Immunotherapy Potential in a ‘Cold’ Breast Cancer

    Last February, the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) introduced AutoDiscovery, an open-source experimental AI tool that analyzes massive scientific datasets to uncover new lines of inquiry. The non-profit lab applied it in a partnership with the Paul G. Allen Research Center (PARC) at Providence Swedish Cancer Institute, using AutoDiscovery to analyze The Cancer Genome Atlas, […]
  4. Issue

    Lattice Acquires Pando in Its Latest AI-Native Bet

    Lattice announced this week that it has acquired the career development startup and one-time rival Pando, making its second acquisition this year as the HR software industry consolidates talent tools around AI. Pando founder and chief executive Barbra Gago is joining Lattice as chief marketing and strategy officer. However, financial terms were not disclosed, nor […]
  5. Issue

    Adobe Firefly Graduates Its Audio Tools and Adds a Free Tier to Its AI Assistant

    Sound is usually the last thing a creator adds to a project, and the first thing anyone watching it notices. It’s also the point where the work stops. The edit is finished, the pacing is right, and then comes the detour: out to a stock library, through a licensing page, into a subscription in search […]
  6. Issue

    Travelers Trust AI. The Sites It Recommends Aren’t Ready.

    When Jesse Middleton, a venture capitalist at Flybridge Capital, was looking to arrange travel from New York City to Cancun to attend a wedding, he didn’t scour Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, or even individual airline websites—at least not on his own. Rather, it was handled by an AI agent. He wrote on LinkedIn that it searched […]
  7. Issue

    Snowflake Will Now Pick Which AI Model Handles Your Task

    Snowflake has announced a feature that will soon automatically select the best AI model to handle a customer’s request—and it may not even be one from Anthropic or OpenAI. Dynamic model routing, in Cortex AI as a private preview, is the AI data cloud company’s answer to enterprises that have moved away from the one-model-fits-all […]
  8. Issue

    Agent Plugins Explained: What the New AI Standard Actually Does

    You may think of the agentic world as the Wild West, but over the past two years, technologists have been developing rules of the road. Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol settled how agents access external tools. Google’s Agent2Agent and Cisco-backed AGNTCY took on the question of how agents reach each other. Now, there’s Agent Plugins, a […]
  9. Issue

    Adobe’s AI Collaborators Turn Outside AI Agents Into Governed Workfront Teammates

    At the Adobe Summit last April, the company announced the Workflow Optimization Agent designed to automate “intelligent, connected actions” across workflows. Four months later, the agent—since rebranded as AI Collaborator—is now generally available. Through Adobe Workfront, the company’s work management application, users can delegate work to these virtual teammates similarly to how they might with […]
  10. Issue

    Why AWS Built Dogwood, an Open-Source Policy Language That Limits What AI Agents Can Do Over Time

    You’ve tasked your AI agent to process vendor payments on your behalf. An invoice arrives one day, and the agent autonomously handles the transaction. It runs like clockwork—until the morning you find your bank account overdrawn. Digging in, you discover payments to vendors who never submitted an invoice and, in a few cases, never delivered […]

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?

    Enough to keep you ahead, never enough to clutter your inbox. You'll also get first-look coverage and original interviews whenever the story is worth your time—which, lately, is often. Nothing filler-grade goes out under this masthead. A weekly roundup is delivered Fridays 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?

    The AI Economy explores the people building AI and the reasons behind what they build. I'm interested in 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. My goal is to not focus just on what's being announced, but why it exists and why we should care. The stories are what you'd expect to read on Inc. and First Round Review or see on "60 Minutes."

  5. Can we pitch you stories?

    Yes, I do accept embargoed news and exclusives. Please reach out with your announcements, launches, and story ideas—email me or use this form. I also accept tips securely via Signal at @kenyeung.888.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

The AI Economy

AI Moves Fast. I Separate Signal From Spin.

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