🌶️ Hot Fudge Sunday for 2025-07-06

July 6, 2025

As I mentioned last week, Buttondown continues to be my trusted newsletter delivery service. My simple Buttondown and Mastodon related python scripts handle the replication to fudge.org now.

Last week

Last week was short but NexusTek kept rockin’ again!

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nexustek-ranked-on-channel-partners-2025-msp-501tech-industrys-most-prestigious-list-of-managed-service-providers-worldwide-302496065.html

This week

Depending on the weather in Raleigh-Durham this week, I’m looking forward to Tuesday's Triangle Biotech and hope to make it back for First Friday's Founded too.

Hot Fudge Daily Digest

📈 Markets Monday for 2025-06-30

It’s triple the spicy this week.

Last week

AI, space satellites, and AI related networking!

This week

Mergers and Quantumania!

Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/research-hub/screener/9bda6c7b-fe9e-41ca-9da9-e281a4a9889a

🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday for 2025-07-01

💰 + 🤖 Funding for AI-anything companies continues.

Campfire (accounting services): $35M
Tandem Health (medical copilot): $50M
Levelpath (procurement software): $55M
Cato Networks (network security): $359M
Surge AI (data labeling): $1B
xAI (platform): $10B

🤪 Wacky Wednesday for 2025-07-02

The most interesting shared link in Slack communities:

(safe for work link)

https://jacksonpollock.org/

🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2025-07-03

One story that caught my eye this week:

https://www.techmeme.com/250703/p13#a250703p13

It’s important to remember this is the year 2025.

CEOs claiming AI will replace people in current jobs is click bait at best and sensationalizing for rage clicks at worst. Where are the results?

Surveys are plentiful in characterizing CEO confidence but the same was true of “digital transformation” before this and “big data” of years before that. Results matter.

A year ago, I attended “Life After Big Tech: Where Are Laid Off Workers Now?“ at SXSW 2024. Here are some of my notes:

Trends leading to where we are today
- Over hiring
- Bloated and overstuffed organizations
- AI and automation rendering some amount of labor reductions
Debates
- Layoffs as a mask for poor performance
- Instead of 20 staff with a speciality, you’ll need 2 because of AI
- If you can be Upwork’d you can be AI’d
- There are freelancers doing top 1% work getting a 16% increase in their rates and 12% more revenue from AI as their toolchain

Source:

https://fudge.org/archive/sxsw-2024-days-1-3/

✅ Final Thoughts Friday for 2025-07-04

💸 + 💰 The big tech story for the week was “Section 174”

https://www.techmeme.com/250704/p12#a250704p12

While I don’t think that a regression to prior R&D related tax code will suddenly reverse software developer roster shrinkage — there will be an impact to offshore and nearshore software development companies. US company software related over-hiring is probably not going to happen (again?) as we are several years past ZIRP.

🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday for 2025-07-05

I’ve selected a Friday news dump item that reached a peak level of trope, cliché, or bromide on the slowest news day that may be attempting to avoid wider coverage. Also, July 4th is a great time to go below the radar in US media.

https://www.techmeme.com/250704/p11#a250704p11

AI TRiSM aside, a shift in focus to military superiority in later stage institutional AI work means the concept of ESTEEM and programs like ESTEEM (NCSU) are even more important in early stage institutional AI work. Arguably, societies risk the eventual export of military grade dystopian fever dream panopticons into more widespread commercial application.

#OpenToWork Weekly

I participated in a #NeverSearchAlone #JSC after rebooting Cuthrell Consulting and joining NexusTek.

I added those #OpenToWork from my LinkedIn network to this newsletter. Over time, we've grown an Alumni 🎉 section for those that transitioned to their next career adventure.

Alumni 🎉

Those in my network that are #OpenToWork:

View this page on GitHub.