Happy Friday. As I feared when I gave you all a heads up last week, this week’s newsletter is coming to you a few days later than hoped for one reason I expected (travel and conference-hosting) and one unpleasant surprise (a painful rotator cuff injury).
Firstly, I spent Monday and Tuesday co-hosting what I thought was a stellar Fortune Brainstorm AI event in San Francisco. I held onstage discussions with top execs from Amazon, Perplexity, Gap, Zoox, and Daydream and listened in on fascinating interviews with other big names in AI—plus bonus convos with a thoughtful Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a hilarious Natasha Lyonne, and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie.
But I also spent the last evening of the event dealing with significant arm and shoulder pain that made most movement impossible until a doctor’s visit yesterday and some treatment.
Thankfully, I’m feeling more like myself now and trusting that the worst is behind me. That means I’ll be back with our next regularly scheduled weekly newsletter on Tuesday. I appreciate your understanding.
On to the good stuff…
Swear they were laughing with me, not at me. From left to right: me; Daydream’s Julie Bornstein; Perplexity’s Dmitry Shevelenko; and Gap Inc.’s Sven Gerjets. Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune
The Center Aisle
The downstage monitor was flashing all red and all zeroes but I had to blow right through it; I had forgotten to ask one key question of one of my onstage guests.
That’s because last month Amazon sued the AI search engine Perplexity, arguing that the startup was violating Amazon’s policies—and the law—by intentionally evading Amazon’s security systems via its new AI browser, called Comet. Online shoppers can instruct Comet’s AI agent to shop on Amazon on their behalf. But part of Amazon’s argument is that Perplexity shouldn’t offer this to Amazon customers in light of Amazon’s protest, Amazon’s security measures meant to block it, and the fact that Amazon believes Comet degrades the shopping experience and puts customer data at risk.
Since I had Perplexity chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko sitting two seats from me onstage, of course I had to ask him about the lawsuit. The truth is I half-expected a polite “I’m going to decline to comment” or some similar safe answer. But I should have known that might not be the case, considering Perplexity’s penchant for calling out larger tech players.
Some underdogs take the “glad to be here” humble road. That is not Perplexity.
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