Snap spins off AI video team into new company Dotmo, slashing costs (Biz Alert)
On June 18, Snap announced it is carving out its internal AI video group to form a standalone startup called Dotmo. The move follows rising compute expenses that made in‑house video generation too pricey for the social‑media giant. Dotmo will inherit the same models that let Snap create short, AI‑enhanced clips in seconds, but as an independent firm it can sell the service at a fraction of the current price. For a small retailer or plumber in Stony Plain, this means you can produce custom video ads for under $10 a minute instead of paying a freelancer or a pricey agency. The launch is still early, but Snap’s tech stack is proven, and Dotmo plans to offer a self‑service portal by August.
Affordable AI video lets you showcase services on Instagram or TikTok without hiring a videographer, driving more local leads.
Source: TechCrunch AI
Quick Hits
OpenAI adds spend controls for ChatGPT Enterprise (Budget Guard)
OpenAI rolled out granular usage dashboards and hard caps on daily spend for its Enterprise tier on June 18. Small firms can now set a $500 ceiling and get alerts before they hit it, preventing surprise bills while still scaling AI assistants across sales or support. Deploy the new controls in the admin console and watch your monthly AI costs stay predictable.
OpenAI BlogAnthropic launches Cowork, a no‑code Claude agent for your files (Productivity Boost)
Anthropic’s Cowork lets non‑technical users drag an AI assistant onto a folder and ask it to summarize, edit, or extract data from any document. A Stony Plain dentist could drop patient notes into the folder and have Cowork draft follow‑up emails in seconds. The feature ships today and integrates with Windows Explorer, so you can start right from your desktop.
VentureBeat AIAmazon eyes $50 billion AI chip market, may sell to data centers (Opportunity)
AWS CEO Andy Jassy told investors on June 18 that Amazon’s custom AI chips could become a $50 billion revenue stream if they’re offered to third‑party data centers. For local IT shops, this could mean access to cheaper, high‑throughput inference hardware later this year, lowering the cost of running AI‑powered inventory or scheduling tools.
TechCrunch AITool of the Day
Zapier AI
AI‑driven workflow builder for any app
Zapier AI adds natural‑language prompts to Zapier’s automation platform, letting you describe a workflow in plain English and have the system create the integration for you. It can pull leads from Facebook ads, add them to a HubSpot list, and fire a follow‑up email without writing a single line of code. The result is faster setup and fewer manual steps.
Open Zapier, click ‘Create Zap’, type ‘When I get a new Google Review, add the reviewer to a Mailchimp list and send me a Slack alert’, and let Zapier AI build the flow in under a minute.
automation
Check it out →The Number
$50 billion
Amazon’s projected AI‑chip market shows a huge upside for affordable high‑performance compute. When the hardware becomes available to SMBs, you could run AI‑driven inventory forecasts for a fraction of today’s cloud costs.
Source: TechCrunch AI
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