How AI drove $12.5M/min sales on Black Friday

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Hey, it's Clark.

Remember when Black Friday meant camping outside Best Buy at 3 am? This year, Americans spent $11.8 billion online in a weekend from their couches while chatbots did the hunting for them. AI-driven traffic to retail sites jumped 805% compared to last year, with shoppers spending $12.5 million every minute between 10 am and 2 pm. The story here goes beyond the record-breaking number. What changed is the friction coefficient of shopping itself.

The retail funnel didn’t get bigger. It got smoother. It's scaling into something ambient. And increasingly, AI isn't just powering the marketing backend or optimizing inventory. It's quietly scripting the entire choreography of demand and fulfillment. There’s a quiet power shift unfolding—from retailers who own shelves to platforms that own signals. As we close the year, it's worth watching not just how much money is spent, but who’s writing the logic of how and where it moves.

Let’s dive in…

IN TODAY’S EDITION:

Top Story: DeepSeek Drops Two AI Models Rivaling GPT-5 — Free for All

Industry Watch: Xiaomi Targets 5-Year Rollout of Humanoid Robots in Its Factories

Notable Transactions: OpenAI Strikes $38B Cloud Deal with Amazon

New Tools to Try: GPTBots builds custom AI bots that can answer questions, automate workflows, and handle support using your own content and data

Power Prompt: From Zero to Automation Expert - Complete N8N Workflow Mastery

THIS WEEK’S TOP STORY

BUSINESS IMPACT:

• Open-source AI: These models undermine premium-priced APIs from rivals by delivering frontier-level capabilities freely, forcing a re-evaluation of the commercial value of closed models.

• Enterprise & developers: Organizations get access to high-power AI capable of deep reasoning, math, coding and long-document analysis without license fees — unlocking new use cases in research, analytics and automation.

• AI industry competition: The release shifts pressure onto proprietary AI firms to either lower prices, open their models, or significantly improve performance overhead.

INDUSTRY WATCH

Manufacturing | Xiaomi to Deploy Humanoid Robots Across Factories Within Five Years

Xiaomi will integrate humanoid robots across its factories within five years. Its auto plant already uses AI inspection systems that check die-cast parts in two seconds—ten times faster than humans with five times greater accuracy. (Parameter)

Real Estate | Radius Launches Voice-Activated AI for Real Estate Agents

Real estate platform Radius added voice activation to its AI assistant Mel, letting agents request client summaries, create offer documents, and update records by speaking. The platform also introduced automated prospecting that learns each lead's preferred contact method and customizes messages accordingly. Both features are free for all Radius partners. (CityBiz)

Agriculture | Google Takes India-Built Farm AI to Four Asia-Pacific Countries

Google is expanding its agriculture AI models to Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan within months of their India launch. The tools identify fields and crops using satellite imagery and track planting and harvest timelines with updates every 15 days. (Google Blog)

Tech | Alibaba Launches $270 AI Glasses Powered by Qwen

Alibaba entered the smart glasses market with Quark AI Glasses, now available in 604 stores across 82 Chinese cities. The display model starts at $540 with dual screens and 24-hour battery life, while a display-free version costs $270. The glasses run Alibaba's Qwen AI model, competing directly with Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses. (Silicon Republic)

Healthcare | GE Healthcare's New MRI Uses 99% Less Helium

GE HealthCare launched two MRI systems with AI-powered workflows that shorten scan times. The SIGNA Sprint model uses less than 1% of the helium required by conventional MRIs and needs no additional power or cooling systems, making it suitable for remote areas. (Digital Health News)

Banking & Finance | HSBC Partners with Mistral for Self-Hosted AI

HSBC will run French startup Mistral's AI models on its own servers to maintain control over financial data. The bank will start with low-risk tasks like translation, analysis, and risk identification before expanding to fraud detection and lending. (CoinCentral)

Retail | Perplexity Launches Virtual Try-On for Clothes Shopping

Perplexity rolled out virtual try-on to all Pro and Max subscribers. Users upload a photo to create a digital avatar and virtually try on clothes while shopping on the platform. The feature generates realistic images showing how garments fit and drape, competing with Google's similar shopping tool. (TechRadar)

Media | Loud Echo's AI Creates Custom Ads in Real-Time

Loud Echo launched a platform that generates tailored ads on the fly for every impression. The system reads the page, analyzes audience signals, and creates custom creative instantly—integrating generation, targeting, and bidding in one platform. Early campaigns with e-commerce, gaming, and finance companies show 3X higher performance than static ads. (PR Newswire)

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS

OpenAI Signs $38B Cloud Deal with Amazon - The ChatGPT maker secured a seven-year agreement to access Nvidia processors for AI training, reducing its reliance on Microsoft as it diversifies computing power sources. (BBC)

Physical Intelligence Secures $600M at $5.6B Valuation - The robotics startup building AI software that enables robots to adapt to any environment will use funds to collect training data, forge partnerships, and expand its team. (The Robot Report)

Black Forest Labs Secures $300M at $3.25B Valuation - The German AI lab powering Elon Musk's Grok image generator and used by Adobe and ElevenLabs will direct funds toward research and development. (TechCrunch)

OpenEvidence Secures $200M at $6B Valuation - The medical AI search engine supporting over 16 million monthly clinical consultations will deploy funds to train models for search, ranking, and clinical-trial matching. (VentureBurn)

Harmonic Secures $120M at $1.45B Valuation - The AI startup co-founded by Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev eliminates hallucinations by requiring models to output reasoning as verifiable code, with funds going toward compute power for safety-critical industries. (Yahoo Finance)

NEW TOOLS TO TRY

POWER PROMPT

This Week: From Zero to Automation Expert - Complete N8N Workflow Mastery

Build a complete interactive N8N automation course with progress tracking, real workflows, and hands-on exercises that transform you from automation beginner to production-ready automation expert.

Create a comprehensive interactive N8N automation course taking learners from beginner to expert level

COURSE STRUCTURE
8 modules with 3-4 lessons each (24-32 total):
- Module 1: N8N Fundamentals & Setup
- Module 2: Basic Nodes & Data Flow
- Module 3: API Integration & HTTP Requests
- Module 4: Workflow Logic, Control Flow & Error Handling
- Module 5: Advanced Data Manipulation & Transformations
- Module 6: Authentication & Security
- Module 7: Webhooks, Triggers & Real-Time Automation
- Module 8: Advanced Workflows & Production Deployment

LESSON REQUIREMENTS
Interactive HTML Artifact with:
- Progress tracking (12-20 checkboxes per lesson)
- Collapsible sections for navigation
- Visual workflow diagrams showing node connections
- Modern CSS styling with gradients/animations

Hands-On Learning:
- Real business scenarios (customer onboarding, e-commerce, notifications)
- Exact N8N interface instructions ("Click +", "Double-click node")
- Configuration panels with precise field names/values
- Screenshot-style descriptions
- Troubleshooting sections

Interactive Features:
- Live demos with clickable scenarios
- Code examples with copy-to-clipboard
- Interactive logic testers
- Practice exercises with specific configurations

Knowledge Reinforcement:
- 5-8 practical quiz questions per lesson
- Immediate feedback with explanations
- Progress scoring (80% target)
- N8N interface focus, not just theory

CONTENT STANDARDS
Each Lesson:
- Start with real-world business scenario
- Build complete, functional workflows from scratch
- Show exact node configurations (field names, values)
- Include data flow explanations
- Cover error handling and edge cases
- End with working automation solution

Progressive Complexity:
- Early: Simple 2-node workflows
- Mid-course: 8-12 node complex branching
- Final: Production-ready enterprise automation

Technical Accuracy:
- Use actual N8N node names/properties
- Reference real APIs (JSONPlaceholder, REST Countries)
- Include proper expression syntax (${$json.field})
- Cover N8N-specific concepts (triggers, webhooks)

KEY SCENARIOS TO INCLUDE
Customer onboarding, e-commerce order processing, social media management, data sync, email marketing, invoice generation, support ticket routing, analytics dashboards

ADVANCED TOPICS
Sub-workflows, error handling, rate limiting, data transformation, conditional logic, database operations, real-time monitoring, performance optimization, security best practices

Prompt credit: Prompter

THAT’S A WRAP

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Remember: The quiet revolution is how AI turns every limitation into a starting point we never expected.

See you next week,
Clark Valberg

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