Aug 22, 2025 5 min read Daily Rundown

⛵ TikTok Bans Human

More Stories: AI Marketing Playbook, DBS Central Bank

Good Morning, Early Adopters!

What was once stable and predictable now feels more like an unfolding experiment—one where power, creativity, and identity are rewritten in real time.

TikTok Just Banned Human Ad Buyers

👀 What’s the move: Starting Sept 1, TikTok Shop advertisers must use GMV Max, its AI ad engine. No toggles, no opt-outs. Pick a budget, set ROI, and the algorithm does the rest — placement, spend, even new creatives. Smaller sellers like the “ROI Protection” guarantee; bigger brands call it a black box.

💡 Why it’s not boring: AI-driven ads are already the industry’s direction (Google and Meta nudge; TikTok shoves). But compulsory automation rewrites the ad power dynamic: strategy migrates from brands to platform. TikTok isn’t just mediating commerce — it’s becoming the market maker, siphoning data and control while agencies lose leverage.

⛵ Key takeaway: The future of ads isn’t AI-assisted — it’s AI-enforced, and TikTok just made the first grab for total control.

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Alibaba introduces Qoder — the agentic coding platform that redefines what an IDE can do. Built on Alibaba’s scale and innovation, Qoder isn’t just another AI helper. It’s designed to think deeper, handle complexity, and deliver Real Software, not drafts.

Core Advantages (Qoder VS Cursor):

From Snippets to Systems: Cursor drafts code; Qoder plans across your entire repo, edits multiple files, and ships production-ready results.
Context That Stays Locked: Unlike Cursor’s limited memory, Qoder understands your full codebase, docs, and architecture — with long-term learning.
Delegate, Don’t Just Assist: Cursor assists line by line; Qoder lets you hand over specs in Quest Mode and get back complete, tested software.

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MARKETING

Retail’s New Front Door: GEO or Go Home

👀 What’s the move: Search engines and e-commerce homepages are losing ground to AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the new retail playbook: brands must create structured, Q&A-driven content so LLMs surface their products in real shopping queries.

💡 Why it’s not boring: GEO traffic isn’t just about discovery — according to Forbes, it converts at nine times the rate of SEO, because AI-powered answers feel more contextual and trustworthy. That’s why ChatGPT recommends Patagonia and REI jackets while brands like The North Face or Columbia don’t even show up. The difference isn’t product quality, it’s content readiness: Patagonia taught the models who they are, others didn’t. The shelf is now the training set.

⛵ Key takeaway: In AI retail, visibility means survival — if the model doesn’t know you, neither will the customer.

FINTECH

DBS Is Rehearsing for a Central Bank

Photo by: DBS

👀 What’s the move: Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, putting structured notes on Ethereum isn’t just about turning $100K tickets into $1K slices. It’s the first time a major commercial bank is acting less like a private-wealth concierge and more like a proto-issuer of digital money — plugging into Singapore’s Project Guardian, which tests how tokenized bonds, funds, and FX could run on shared rails.

💡 Why it’s not boring: If banks can mint, fractionalize, and settle real assets directly on a public chain, the line between a commercial bank and a central bank starts to blur. Project Guardian quietly makes Ethereum the testbed for monetary infrastructure. The scary part? Once money itself becomes software modules, the future of finance stops looking linear and starts looking wildly unpredictable.

⛵ Key takeaway: When banks moonlight as central banks on Ethereum, the next financial crisis might be coded — not traded.

STARTUP SPOT

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→ Founded ~2020 by Cameron Owen (Johns Hopkins alum) in Houston; lead asset R-biolin shows bioequivalence to Novolin R; scaling 50× and entering first-in-human trials in 2025.

🧾 Dayforce
“AI HCM, going private.”
Cloud HR + payroll + talent suite with AI forecasting, workforce analytics, employee experience tools.
→ Founded 1992 (ex-Ceridian), IPO 2018 ($462M raise), rebranded 2024. Aug 2025: Thoma Bravo to acquire for $12.3B ($70/share, 32% premium) with ADIA co-invest; deal closes 2026.

BAY AREA MEMOS

Meta reportedly agrees to a multi-year cloud deal with Google worth over $10 billion to bolster its AI capabilities.
India's parliament passes a bill to ban real-money online games, threatening the survival of a multi-billion dollar industry.
Alibaba launches Qoder, an agentic coding platform for generate real software through AI delegation.
Self-driving firm Nuro raises $203 million in a round backed by new investors Nvidia and Uber.
Louisiana approves natural gas power plants for Meta's new AI data center, sparking concerns over costs for ratepayers and the company's climate goals.
Anthropic is reportedly in talks to raise an additional $10 billion in a massive new funding round.
Google is offering its comprehensive Gemini AI platform to government agencies for 47 cents, undercutting rivals OpenAI and Anthropic.

TOGETHER WITH US

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