🗣️ Top Stories

If you work in marketing, product, or tech - and want to keep pace with the shifts AI is driving across search, software and strategy - here’s what you need to know this week.

💰 Big Tech spending on AI hits record highs – The Wall Street Journal reports that the biggest tech firms are investing at an unprecedented scale - but even those billions aren’t enough to meet demand.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta have poured tens of billions into AI infrastructure, from data centres to chips, in pursuit of future growth. Yet, the soaring cost of compute power is starting to worry investors.

Despite heavy spending, margins remain strong thanks to advertising and cloud divisions. The question is how long these AI bets can sustain returns before the next phase of monetisation arrives.

Key takeout: Big Tech’s capital expenditure has surged past $125 billion a quarter as Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft accelerate their race to dominate the AI era.

Meta’s investment risks outpacing near-term returns, Alphabet is weaving AI into its core products, and Microsoft is rapidly scaling its data-centre network to power Azure and OpenAI.

The common thread: every dollar poured into compute heightens the pressure for AI to deliver real-world commercial outcomes.

You can see the significant increase in Capex below for the four big tech players.

Source: The Information. Capital expenditures for AI and data centre buildouts are taking a growing share of Big Tech’s cash flow.

📈 OpenAI gears up for an IPO with major restructuring – The Information reveals that OpenAI is preparing for an organisational overhaul - shifting toward a single Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) that would enable future fundraising and a potential IPO.

The move comes amid record compute costs and an ambition to expand the company’s commercial footprint beyond ChatGPT. It would allow employees, investors, and the original non-profit to hold traditional shares, aligning incentives as the company matures.

This restructuring, coupled with SoftBank’s recent $22.5B investment approval, strengthens the likelihood of OpenAI going public within the next 12–18 months.

Key takeout: OpenAI’s restructure formalises its shift from a capped-profit startup to a full commercial entity - clearing the path to an eventual IPO. Microsoft now owns 27% of the company, the OpenAI Foundation holds another 26%, and the nonprofit board retains ultimate control over governance and safety.

The move removes major legal and investor uncertainty, unlocks fresh capital for its escalating compute costs, and gives OpenAI flexibility to work with other clouds beyond Azure. In essence, it’s the final step in transforming OpenAI from a research lab into a trillion-dollar AI platform. Elon Musk take note.

⚠️ Reddit hack targets advertiser data – Adweek reports that Reddit has suffered a cyberattack compromising some advertiser data and internal documents - including a presentation detailing how AI search is driving record ad revenue on the platform.

The leaked slides reveal how Reddit’s visibility within ChatGPT and Perplexity is translating into higher brand budgets, particularly from tech and entertainment clients seeking “AI Search exposure”.

While no user data was reportedly affected, the breach has reignited debate around the risks of data partnerships and how social platforms are monetising AI training access.

Key takeout: Reddit’s dual role - as both a data source for AI models and a major ad platform - makes it uniquely exposed. The hack underscores how intertwined AI, privacy and monetisation have become in the modern web.

It also shows how brands are turning to trusted platforms like Reddit - now the top citation source - to buy their way into answers. With OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity all building vast free user bases, it seems inevitable that each will turn to ad-supported experiences to drive revenue.

Thanks to each and every one of you for subscribing and reading.

Have a great week!

Andy

🎃 Who dominated AI Search for Halloween?

Of course, AI Search never sleeps. I'm extremely honoured to be part of Obsero.ai where we track thousands of data points across AI Search to help brands understand how they perform (visibility), how they’re perceived (sentiment), how prominent they are in answers (position) and how they are talked about (citations).

Ahead of Halloween last Friday, we looked at which UK retailers dominate AI Search visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Google AI Mode. The findings are below 👇

• 👻 Amazon UK leads decisively, followed by supermarket heavyweights and general retailers like Tesco and Wilko.
• 🎯 Smaller players such as The Range and Party Delights feature prominently - a sign that smaller brands can win in AI answers through strong content and structured data.
• 🕸️ Reddit, Facebook, and Etsy are key citation sources - platforms shaping AI-driven discovery outside of retailer sites.
• 🧙 Some well-known brands, like Marks & Spencer and BMI Group, rank highly for citations but low for average position - meaning they’re referenced but not visible in the answers.

So what can we take from this - other than “be a $2.37 trillion company”?

• 👉 Comprehensive content coverage across key topics is crucial.
• 👉 Branded searches remain a powerful driver of AI Search performance.
• 👉 Strong information architecture (headings, imagery, schema, video) drives clarity and retrieval.
• 👉 Know where your potential customers are discussing your category - then develop a strategy to engage and shape sentiment.

Key takeout: AI Search is front and centre of key shopping events. Whether it be Halloween, Black Friday of the holiday season, expect Google AIOs, ChatGPT and Perplexity to used to provide recommendations to consumers, although - we're not yet there for agentic commerce. Maybe 2026?

🎙️ Leading the shift in search at Wix

I’ve just wrapped up a new Franc Talking episode with the amazing Crystal Carter - Head of SEO Communications and AI Search at Wix. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Crystal talk through her approach to AI Search and how Wix is adapting their product to meet customer demand. I was also impressed with her entrepreneurial nature and ability to experiment whilst taking bets on the what the future holds.

• Wix, the leading global website builder and online visibility platform, is evolving from a website builder into an AI Search platform - helping users surface across search, AI Overviews and conversational engines.
• AI Search changes how discovery happens; schema, structure and segmentation now play a much bigger role.
• Wix’s AI Search Lab is focused on testing how generative engines source, interpret and cite website content.
• Crystal sees SEO not disappearing but evolving - as SEO specialists look to adapt to a zero-click world.
• The discussion highlighted how platforms like Wix can help creators and businesses stay visible as AI-driven discovery becomes the norm.

✏️ Beautiful templates

🚀 Powerful growth features

📈 Built-in analytics

💸 Monetisation tools