April 5, 2026
One of my favorite things to do on Sundays is go through everything I read, researched, and worked on during the week and try to make sense of it. I started doing this publicly a few weeks ago. You don’t need to be technical to follow along. You don’t need to be in the industry. You just need to be curious about where things are heading.
This was one of those weeks where the headlines feel like they’re from different centuries. On one end, astronauts left Earth for the Moon for the first time since the Nixon administration. On the other end, the Department of Transportation said they’re not interested in AI chatbots. Both things happened in the same seven days.
That contrast is kind of the theme. Let me walk through it.
We sent humans to the Moon again
Artemis II launched from Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, April 1st. Four astronauts: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency. They’re on a roughly 10 day trip around the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft.
This is the first time human beings have left Earth orbit in 53 years. The last time this happened was Apollo 17. December 1972. Most people reading this were not alive.
I want to talk about the decision making behind this because I think that’s the real story, not the engineering specs. NASA had been building toward this orbital station called Gateway for years. They looked at it, decided it wasn’t the right path, and scrapped it. Pivoted to permanent Moon bases instead. They also announced a nuclear powered Mars mission for 2028. And they did all of this while the White House proposed cutting NASA’s budget by 24% and its workforce by 32%.
And they still launched on the first attempt.
By April 2nd, Orion completed its translunar injection burn and left Earth orbit for good. Jeremy Hansen said from space: “Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of.” By the end of this week, they were approaching the Moon and preparing for a flyby that will break Apollo 13’s all time human distance record by over 4,000 miles. They’re planning to recreate the famous “Earthrise” photograph from Apollo 8. Victor Glover sent an Easter message from space.
I keep coming back to this because the lesson isn’t about rockets. It’s about focus. An organization under enormous pressure decided to do fewer things and do them right. They killed a project that wasn’t working, redirected toward something more ambitious, and shipped. First principles thinking. That’s what building a nation looks like. That’s what American ingenuity looks like. Science, technology, innovation, and the courage to make hard calls. I don’t care what side of any debate you’re on. That kind of leadership is inspiring. Politics agnostic. Full stop.
It’s not just about the cool technical achievements. What hasn’t been done in decades is now happening because of focused leadership, speed in decision making, and a willingness to prioritize. That’s what I think we need to see more of everywhere. Not just at NASA.
Also worth mentioning: SpaceX filed for what could be the largest IPO in history this same week, targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation. And ULA launched a record 29 Amazon satellites on a single Atlas V. Space is becoming a real industry, not just a government program.
Gemma 4 and why Google deserves more credit than they get
A little background for anyone who doesn’t track this world closely.
Google published a research paper in 2017 called “Attention Is All You Need” that introduced the transformer architecture. That’s the core technology underneath every AI model that exists today. ChatGPT was built on it. Claude was built on it. Every one of them. Google also invented the TPU, the custom chip that made training these models at scale even possible. And back in 2014, when Sergey Brin and Larry Page were still running the company hands on, they acquired DeepMind, which became one of the most important AI research labs in the world.
So when people talk about the AI revolution, Google literally built the foundation. Everyone else is building on top of what they created.
And what they keep doing, which I think doesn’t get enough attention, is making it available to everyone.
On April 2nd, they released Gemma 4. Four model sizes. Fully open source under the Apache 2 license, meaning anyone can use it for any purpose: commercial, personal, modify it, build products on it. No restrictions. The smallest version runs on a phone. The biggest competes with frontier models from any lab and handles text, images, video, and audio all in one model.
The one that caught my eye is the 26 billion parameter version that only activates about 4 billion parameters at a time. It’s like a big engine that cruises on four cylinders when it can. It scores nearly as high as Google’s full 31 billion parameter dense model but uses way less compute. That’s meaningful for anyone thinking about running AI locally or at scale without massive costs.
400 million+ downloads since the Gemma family launched. Over 100,000 community variants people have built on top of it. They also released specialized versions for medical, translation, security, and embeddings. And they built it into Android’s on device AI system so developers can run Gemma 4 natively on phones.
I’m downloading it right now to test on my Mac Studio. The fact that I can run a model this capable on a machine sitting on my desk, for free, is kind of amazing.
The company that invented this technology is supporting the community and the ecosystem by keeping it open. In a world where everyone’s trying to build walled gardens, I think that deserves to be called out.
AI is about to change how we buy things online, and most sellers aren’t ready
This is the section I care about most personally because I sell products across Amazon, Shopify, Wayfair, TikTok Shop, and wholesale every single day.
Google and Shopify co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol. In simple terms: it’s a shared set of rules that lets AI assistants actually shop for you. When you ask ChatGPT or Google Gemini to find you a product, this protocol is what allows the AI to browse a store, understand what’s available, handle checkout, and manage returns, all without the store needing a custom connection to every AI platform.
This matters because shopping is moving into conversations. Not websites, not apps. Conversations. And Shopify’s data shows it’s happening now: traffic from AI tools up 7x since January, purchases from AI searches up 11x. They launched Agentic Storefronts to let millions of merchants sell directly inside AI chats.
Over 20 major companies backing it: Walmart, Target, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Home Depot, Wayfair, Etsy. The open source spec is live at ucp.dev. Shopify’s engineering team published a deep dive on how the architecture works.
The competitive angle: OpenAI tried building shopping directly inside ChatGPT and it didn’t work well. Walmart’s internal data showed conversion rates were 3x lower when people bought directly in ChatGPT compared to being sent to the retailer’s own site. So OpenAI is pivoting to an app model. Google and Shopify are building the universal rail. As an operator, that’s the one I’m watching.
The question I’m asking myself: is my catalog ready for agents? If an AI can’t find my products, describe them correctly, and process a purchase, I’m invisible to whatever shopping looks like in two years.
On Toby Lutke’s AI memo: Just turned one year old. The one where the Shopify CEO said AI usage is now a fundamental expectation and teams need to show AI can’t do the job before asking for headcount. A year later, the results are in the product. This week: new API with B2B wholesale, tariff support, translated metafields. They shipped.
On tariffs: April 2nd was the one year anniversary of “Liberation Day” and the situation got worse, not better. 100% tariff on patented pharmaceuticals. Strengthened duties on metals, 200% on Russian aluminum. Effective tariff rate hit 11%, highest since 1943. Amazon adding 3.5% surcharges on FBA. Framework Laptop paused U.S. sales on some models because they’d sell at a loss.
I live this. Every week I’m negotiating with Turkish factories on raw material increases caused by the same forces. The compliance paperwork alone hits small companies disproportionately.
Robots are not slowing down
Multiple developments worth knowing about.
Figure AI demonstrated Figure 03. Third generation, designed for real production. They’re assembling one robot roughly every 90 minutes. That’s a production line, not a prototype shop. I’m gonna watch the full demo walkthrough this week. Excited about this one.
Boston Dynamics and Hyundai announced plans to deploy “tens of thousands” of robots across manufacturing. Here’s the context most coverage misses: Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics. They acquired them. So the parent company just became the biggest customer of its own subsidiary. That’s not a test run. That’s a corporate level strategic bet. DHL also signed on for another 1,000 robots.
Generalist AI released GEN-1, an embodied AI model claiming 99% task success where previous models hit 64%. The novel part: it trains on 500,000+ hours of human wearable data, not robot data, and then only needs about an hour of robot specific tuning.
Unitree filed for their IPO. Revenue from 123 million yuan in 2022 to 1.7 billion yuan in 2025. Their humanoid starts at $29,900.
ProRL Combine is confirmed for April 19th in Boston. America’s first robot sports competition. Same day as Beijing’s humanoid robot half marathon. I’m gonna try to go to Boston for it. If anyone else is heading there, hit me up: adem@wellwoven.com.
The AI money race and things that made me go hmm
OpenAI closed $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation. Largest private funding round in history. Amazon $50B, SoftBank $30B, Nvidia $30B. Over 900 million weekly active users. IPO expected later this year.
I’m still using Claude as my daily driver. It’s been fantastic. But you can’t ignore what $122 billion means for where this industry is going.
Microsoft launched their own AI models this week, completely separate from OpenAI: speech to text, voice, image generation. Their speech model has the lowest error rate of anything available. Mustafa Suleyman said “we’re now a top three lab.” Microsoft paying $13 billion for OpenAI and then building competing models in house. That’s corporate strategy at its finest.
Anthropic and the Pentagon are in a legal fight after Anthropic refused to let Claude be used for mass surveillance or lethal autonomous weapons. A federal judge called the blacklisting “Orwellian.” Ninth Circuit appeal deadline is April 30th. This one is going to matter a lot.
Anthropic also blocked third party tools from running on subscription credits. OpenClaw on your Claude subscription? Done. Pay as you go only. I think that’s whack but I get the business logic.
OpenAI acquired TBPN, the daily tech show on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, it’s actually a pretty fresh take on tech and business. Been growing on me. First media acquisition by an AI company. Money talks, people.
On the tools I’m using: Cursor 3.0 shipped this week and I just upgraded. The new worktree command and best of n command (run multiple agents on the same task, pick the winner) are cool and I’m going to test them. But I’ll be honest, I’ve been moving toward Claude Code more and more lately. I used to love Cursor for the interface, the file directory on the left side, seeing the agents work on the side. It felt more descriptive, especially getting started. But Claude Code in plan mode lets you see everything it’s about to do before it does it. That’s genuinely useful.
And here’s the thing that surprised me this weekend: developing from my phone. I know mobile coding has existed in different forms for different tools. This is my first time really playing with it. And it’s amazing. Probably going to be addictive. I’ll report back on how it works in practice.
Healthcare AI is starting to deliver real results
This section makes me genuinely happy.
Eli Lilly signed a $2.75 billion deal with Insilico Medicine for drug candidates discovered by AI. Their first compound went from identifying the target to starting human trials in under 30 months. That normally takes four to six years. As of early 2026, over 173 AI discovered programs are in clinical development, with Phase I success rates running 80 to 90% compared to the historical average of 52%.
Butterfly Network got FDA clearance for an AI powered ultrasound tool that estimates gestational age in under two minutes without needing a trained sonographer. Nearly half of rural U.S. counties don’t have hospital obstetric services. This tool brings that capability to the places that need it most. It’s already deployed in Malawi and Uganda.
Mount Sinai deployed AI across all seven of its hospitals, integrated directly into their electronic health records. Clinicians ask questions in natural language and get evidence backed answers with citations.
The VA deployed agentic AI across 150 medical centers. Scheduling went from “a handful” of appointments per day to 25. VR therapy expanding to 45 more centers showing 46.7% pain reduction.
Here’s what I hope comes from all of this. I hope costs come down. I hope quality goes up. I hope diagnosis gets faster and more accurate and more accessible to people regardless of where they live or what they can afford. The business of healthcare has been this big complicated opaque expensive machine for too long. If AI can help democratize the knowledge and wisdom of medicine, if it can bring that information and that capability down to all of us, that’s the whole point. That’s what technology is supposed to do. I don’t know the perfect way to say it but I think most people feel the same.
On the war
I want to say this briefly and carefully because this is a technology newsletter, not a political one.
The conflict continues to affect everyone, and as someone who imports physical goods, it’s in my world every day. Raw material costs are spiking. Conversations with suppliers are harder. There’s a lot of uncertainty about where things are going and what costs look like over the coming months.
I don’t want to get political about it. I just want to say I’m hoping for peace. I think most of us are. It’s a terrible situation. My heart goes out to everyone affected by it. We just hope this resolves and the world starts to heal.
The contrast: rapid acceleration and stubborn stagnation
I want to end here because this has been on my mind all week.
Rockets to the Moon. $122 billion funding rounds. Robots assembled every 90 minutes. Open source AI you can run on your laptop. Healthcare diagnosis in two minutes.
And then:
Google found that 80% of public servants believe AI could help them do their jobs. Only 18% think their governments actually use it well. That’s a 62 point gap between believing it works and actually deploying it.
The DOT explicitly rejected AI chatbots this week. They’re consolidating 60 apps into 7 platforms. Expected timeline: 2028 or 2029.
3D printed homes were supposed to cut housing costs in half. They sell for $375,000 to $600,000. Real savings: 5 to 15%.
The UK’s government data portal has 25% broken links and surfaces outdated datasets. You can’t build AI on top of broken infrastructure.
But there are bright spots. Maryland saved $400K using AI across 40,000 employees. Dearborn, Michigan resolves 70% of city calls with an AI chatbot in over 100 languages. Connecticut cut forensic investigation times from months to hours.
The pattern is isolated proof points, not systemic change. The innovation exists. The institutions, the procurement rules, the regulations, they’re not ready.
It’s an interesting time to be alive. Some things are moving at a speed that’s hard to comprehend. Other things feel like they haven’t moved in years. That gap between what’s possible and what’s actually deployed is the defining story of this moment.
And honestly, closing that gap doesn’t require more technology. It requires patience. Education. And a willingness to sit down and actually understand what’s happening.
Be patient. Do the work. Pay attention. That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s all any of us can do.
I’m Adem Ogunc. I’m the founder of Well Woven, a rug importing and e-commerce company based in Easton, PA, and FurniPulse, a furniture industry intelligence platform. One of my favorite things to do on Sundays is sit down and go through what happened in technology. I do it because I think understanding technology is the most important skill of the next decade, and it shouldn’t require a CS degree or insider language to get into it. Issue #3. Thanks for reading. See you next week.
Hey, I’ve Been Thinking… 