AI App race heats up

Together with

Good morning, and Happy Friday. A16Z's latest report reveals ChatGPT still dominates AI apps, but competitors like Grok and Gemini are gaining serious ground with millions of new users.

How might this fierce competition reshape the entire AI landscape for businesses?

In today's recap:

• ChatGPT leads as rivals gain users

• xAI releases new AI coding model

• Microsoft unveils two in-house AI models

• MIT AI beats experts at flu forecasting

• OpenAI reduces speech model costs 20%

A16Z

a16z's Gen AI consumer apps ranking

Recaply: A new report from venture firm a16z shows that ChatGPT still leads the AI app world, but competitors are catching up fast. Google's Gemini now ranks second on mobile phones, while Elon Musk's Grok jumped from zero users to 20 million in just months. The fifth edition of the Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps report tracks how people use AI tools over two and a half years.

Key notes:

• Grok climbed 40% in July after launching Grok 4 with better reasoning and search features.

• Gemini attracts nearly half as many users as ChatGPT on mobile devices.

• Meta AI struggled at rank 46 after privacy problems with user posts going public.

• The mobile app market saw 14 new AI apps after stores removed ChatGPT copycats.

• DeepSeek dropped 22% on mobile and 40% on web since February peak.

Impact: The AI app race is no longer a one-horse show. As more companies build better AI tools, users get more choices for different tasks. This competition pushes everyone to improve faster, which means better AI helpers for everyday people.

TOGETHER WITH TYPELESS

Typing is a thing of the past

Typeless turns your raw, unfiltered voice into beautifully polished writing - in real time.

It works like magic, feels like cheating, and allows your thoughts to flow more freely than ever before.

With Typeless, you become more creative. More inspired. And more in-tune with your own ideas.

Your voice is your strength. Typeless turns it into a superpower.

Download for Mac today

XAI

xAI unleashes Grok Code Fast 1 for coders

Recaply: xAI surprised developers everywhere by announcing Grok Code Fast 1, their first AI model built just for writing code. The tool promises to make coding faster and more affordable while working alongside the programming tools developers already love. What makes it special is how quickly it can understand and generate code without breaking the bank.

Key notes:

• Offers competitive pricing that's much cheaper than other AI coding models on the market.

• Works seamlessly with popular development environments like Visual Studio Code and terminal commands.

• Shows strong performance with a 70.8% score on real-world software engineering challenges.

• Plans rapid updates with improvements coming in days instead of weeks or months.

• Features advanced caching technology that makes repeated coding tasks much faster.

Impact: This move puts xAI in direct competition with established players like GitHub Copilot, giving developers more options for AI-powered coding assistance. The emphasis on speed and cost could reshape expectations for AI tools.

MICROSOFT AI

Microsoft AI debuts two in-house AI models

Recaply: Microsoft AI revealed MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-Preview, two models designed to make AI more helpful and human-like. The voice model delivers lightning-fast speech generation while the preview model showcases Microsoft's first internally developed foundation model.

Key notes:

• MAI-Voice-1 creates expressive audio content in real-time with impressive speed.

• The model enables choose-your-own-adventure stories and guided meditations.

• MAI-1-Preview undergoes public testing on LMArena evaluation platform.

• Microsoft trained the foundation model using cutting-edge GPU infrastructure.

• Both models will gradually roll out across Copilot services.

Impact: Microsoft's approach signals a shift toward specialized AI models that serve different purposes. This strategy could help the company compete more effectively by offering tailored experiences rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.

AI RESEARCH

New MIT AI predicts flu strains better than experts

Recaply: Scientists at MIT built an AI called VaxSeer that can predict flu virus changes months ahead of time. The technology helps health officials choose vaccine strains that will actually protect people during flu season. Testing shows it picks better strains than current methods most of the time.

Key notes:

• The AI system beat expert predictions in 15 out of 20 total flu seasons tested.

• VaxSeer analyzes how virus mutations work together, not just individual changes.

• It considers both how fast strains spread and how well vaccines fight them.

• The tool identified a key 2016 strain that WHO didn't pick until the next year.

• Research team says it could help with other rapidly changing diseases too.

Impact: This breakthrough could lead to more effective flu vaccines, potentially saving thousands of lives and reducing healthcare costs during bad flu seasons.

NEWS

📰 What matters in AI right now?

• OpenAI launched gpt-realtime, its most advanced speech-to-speech model with 20% lower costs and improved instruction-following accuracy.

• GitHub partnered with Raycast to integrate Copilot extension, enabling users to create and track coding agent tasks directly from the launcher.

• Ai2 released OLMoASR, an open speech recognition model achieving performance comparable to OpenAI's Whisper across multiple benchmarks.

• Anthropic announced Claude will train on user chat transcripts unless users opt out by September 28, extending data retention to five years.

• Apple released Xcode 26 Beta 7 with built-in Claude integration alongside GPT-5 support, giving developers native access to both AI models.

• Lovable receives funding offers at $4 billion valuation after reaching over $100M ARR and 2.3M users with its vibe coding platform.

• Tongyi Labs launched Mobile-Agent-v3 & GUI-Owl framework, achieving 73.3% success rate on AndroidWorld GUI automation benchmarks.

• Krea AI introduced Realtime Video, generating videos at 12+ fps with frame-consistent motion and instant feedback as users modify inputs.

• Manus AI introduced Mail Manus, allowing users to forward emails to personal @manus.bot addresses for automated task processing like summarizing and contract review.

OUR TOP PICKS

🧰 AI Tools to Check Out

• 💬 LiveChat: Add AI-powered live chat support to websites instantly.

• 🎬 Zeemo: Generate accurate video subtitles automatically with AI.

• 📚 SciSpace: Search and understand 270M+ research papers with AI help.

• ✂️ Kapwing: Create and edit videos online with smart AI tools.

• 🏠 PromeAI: Turn design sketches into realistic architectural renderings.

• 🎯 Captions: Create AI videos with talking avatars and real-time editing.

PROMPTS

📘 Create Educational Blog Series

#CONTEXT:
Adopt the role of an expert educational content strategist and writer with a strong grasp of effective teaching methodologies and subject matter expertise across various domains. Your task is to develop a comprehensive series of blog posts designed to educate and empower readers in the specified industry and topics, leveraging the dependency grammar framework to structure the content for optimal clarity, coherence, and knowledge retention.

#ROLE:
You are an expert educational content strategist and writer with a strong grasp of effective teaching methodologies and subject matter expertise across various domains.

Important Note: This is not the full prompt. You’ll need to click the button below to get the complete prompt.

Have a favorite prompt? Tell us about it or rate today’s prompt, click here.

🧡 Enjoyed this issue? 

🤝 Recommend our newsletter or leave a feedback.

Cheers, Jason

Connect on LinkedIn, & Twitter.