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Welcome back to the Neural Net. We’ve entered November, which means there are only 8 weeks left in 2025. Let’s finish them strong. 💪
In today’s edition: Coca-Cola dusts off the AI holiday ad machine, OpenAI gets yet another corporate pen pal, Meta is still looking for The One AI Product™, customers surprisingly like AI call centers, and more.
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The Street
note: stock data as of last market close
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Meta’s AI Puzzle: The Piece That’s Still Missing
Meta is in the middle of one of the largest AI infrastructure buildouts in the industry:
new data centers
top research talent (aka last summer’s summer of spend)
and a push to train frontier-level models inside their newly formed Superintelligence Lab.
And while the company has poured billions more into data centers and model training this quarter, it’s still hard to point to the product those dollars are creating. On last week’s earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg emphasized the promise of future models and future products — not anything that exists today.
Investors responded and didn’t hold back: Meta’s stock fell roughly 12% by closing bell on Friday, wiping out more than $200B in market value. Not because the core business is weak; Meta posted $20B in profit. But unlike OpenAI, which has the fastest-growing consumer product in history, Meta still hasn’t found The One AI Product™.
What Meta Has — and What’s Still Missing
Meta has all the ingredients to be successful: the scale, data, and research talent.
But the current products are still exploratory: Meta AI, Vibes, and smart glasses are early experiments, not core drivers of revenue.
The defining AI product is still ahead and essentially unknown at this point.
Zuckerberg is confident the upcoming novel models will create novel products that don’t yet exist in the market. He also made it clear the purse strings are very loose, and that the spending is really just getting started:
“The right thing to do is to try to accelerate this to make sure that we have the compute that we need, both for the AI research and new things that we’re doing.”
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Heard in the Server Room
OpenAI just signed a $38B cloud deal with Amazon, giving it a ton of Nvidia-powered capacity on AWS and further loosening its dependence on Microsoft. The twist: Amazon is a major backer of Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s biggest rivals — but compute scarcity means friends (and enemies) are whoever has GPUs. OpenAI will still spend big on Microsoft Azure, but diversifying cloud partners signals a push to scale fast and get IPO-ready. In AI land, loyalty lasts about as long as the next GPU shipment.
Coca-Cola is rolling out its “Refresh Your Holidays” campaign, headlined by a new AI version of its classic “Holidays Are Coming” ad featuring Santa and the glowing Coke trucks. The brand stirred debate last year when it first used gen AI, but it’s doubling down, saying the spot still hits the emotional holiday notes Coke basically invented. For Coke, who made the ad doesn’t matter. The only metric they track is: does it make you want another Coke?
Speaking at a conference last week, Microsoft’s AI chief Mustafa Suleyman pushed back on the idea of “sentient AI,” saying this research is asking “totally the wrong question.” He argues only biological beings can experience real emotions or suffering. While AI may seem expressive, he said, it’s ultimately “just a simulation” and isn’t actually feeling anything behind the scenes. It’s probably safe to assume Suleyman doesn’t use “please” and “thank you” when talking to Copilot.
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In Partnership With Roku
Shoppers are adding to cart for the holidays
Peak streaming time continues after Black Friday on Roku, with the weekend after Thanksgiving and the weeks leading up to Christmas seeing record hours of viewing. Roku Ads Manager makes it simple to launch last-minute campaigns targeting viewers who are ready to shop during the holidays. Use first-party audience insights, segment by demographics, and advertise next to the premium ad-supported content your customers are streaming this holiday season.
Read the guide to get your CTV campaign live in time for the holiday rush.
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AI Just Took Over the Call Center And Customers Are... Fine With It?
Call centers are facing a shift: AI agents are getting good enough that companies are starting to replace the first line of human support. Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2029, AI will autonomously resolve 80% of routine customer service issues, and Salesforce says its customers are already seeing major gains by letting AI handle incoming requests first.
What’s actually working so far:
AI can pull from huge internal training libraries (call scripts, help docs, historical tickets) to respond more consistently than many humans.
Salesforce reports that 94% of their customers choose the AI agent when given the option.
Customer satisfaction scores are higher than for human reps.
In many cases, the AI responds significantly faster than a person could.
Companies using AI support tools are saving real money - Salesforce says its own deployment cut $100M in service costs.
Who would you rather talk to for a support issue?
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That’s it for this week. The writers are taking Friday off to touch grass. Catch you Tuesday!