☕️ AI Tangle Special Edition: Holiday Reading List

Most AI Tangle editions focus on breaking news and the latest tools. This week, we're taking a breather—and curating a list of things we think you'll genuinely find valuable.

I don't ask for much, but here's my one request: these are the things I think you should be doing to get ahead with AI. If you find value in what we share, the best way to support us is by showing up in person.

📅 March 23-24, 2026 | 📍 Durham, NC

This is the conference I co-founded with Todd Lewis, creator of All Things Open, and it's become the premier AI event in the Southeast. Last year, we packed the house. This year, we're expecting 4,000 attendees and it’s definitely worth traveling for!

Why should you come?

Here's the thing: if we have a strong showing, I can keep providing this kind of content for free. Your attendance directly supports what we're building here.

👉 Register at 2026.allthingsai.org

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This isn't a quick headlines roundup—it's substantive, practical AI content for business leaders who want to actually understand and implement, not just skim. Recent editions have covered everything from how people actually use AI (backed by data from 18 billion messages) to choosing the right meeting AI for your enterprise, to building the AI + human operating model.

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Episodes worth your time:

Based on a survey of 5,000+ US adults: 61% of Americans have used AI in the past six months, and nearly 1 in 5 use it daily. The surprising finding? Parents are the power users—nearly 80% of parents with kids under 18 have used AI. The report maps the $12 billion consumer AI market and where the real opportunities lie.

The ecosystem is stabilizing. Google gained ground with four new entries. "Vibe coding" platforms like Lovable jumped to #22. And 22 of the top 50 mobile apps were developed in China but used globally. Essential reading for understanding where consumer AI is heading.

NY Times Bestseller • Smithsonian Top 10 Science Book of the Year

The definitive investigative account of OpenAI and Sam Altman. Karen Hao had unprecedented access—one of the few journalists invited inside OpenAI's offices. What she found was a culture of secrecy, messianic rhetoric, and a race to build AI empires at any cost. From boardroom drama to the hidden workforce in Kenya cleaning up AI's outputs, this reveals what's really happening behind the hype.

Winner, FT Business Book of the Year • Best Book of 2025, The Economist

Every AI model runs on Nvidia chips. This is the story of how a video game hardware company became the most valuable corporation on Earth—and the relentless CEO who made it happen. Stephen Witt had unprecedented access to Jensen Huang, and the result is a page-turner that explains the hardware revolution powering AI.

This isn't the story of ChatGPT. It's the sweeping human saga of how we got here—told through the brilliant weirdos who made it possible: Walter Pitts, the homeless teen who opened the door to neural networks; Janet Baker, whose voice tech gave us Siri; Fei-Fei Li, the overlooked godmother of computer vision. The book peels back the curtain on how AI actually works and what it means to live in an age of thinking machines.

Claude – Anthropic The AI assistant I reach for first. Claude excels at nuanced reasoning, long-form writing, and complex multi-step tasks. If you're doing serious knowledge work, this should be your daily driver.

Manus – The AI Agent That Actually Does Things Not just another chatbot—Manus is an autonomous agent that browses the web, writes code, and completes multi-step tasks on your behalf. Think of it as hiring a capable assistant who can actually execute. Ranked #28 on a16z's Top 100.

Gemini – Google Deeply integrated across Search, Gmail, Docs, and Android. Massive context windows (up to 1 million tokens) and multimodal capabilities. If you're in the Google ecosystem, Gemini is becoming impossible to ignore.

NotebookLM – Google Google's sleeper hit. Upload your documents and NotebookLM becomes an expert on your material. Audio Overviews turn dense documents into podcast-style discussions. New features include Deep Research, Mind Maps, Flashcards, Video Overviews, Infographics, and Slide Decks. Free.

Fireflies.ai – Meeting Intelligence Joins your meetings, transcribes everything, generates summaries with action items. The killer feature: searchable conversation history across all your meetings. Need to find what someone said six months ago? Done.

Grammarly – AI Writing Platform Far beyond spell-check. The 2025 version includes AI agents for proofreading, paraphrasing, citation finding, and an AI Grader. After acquiring Coda and Superhuman, they're building a complete AI-powered work platform.

Taskade – AI-Powered Project Management An all-in-one productivity platform combining task management, real-time collaboration, and workflow automation. The standout feature: customizable AI agents you can deploy to handle specific tasks, provide insights, and adapt based on your interactions. Streamlines everything from project planning to execution.

HeyGen – AI Video Avatars Offers more lifelike avatars and better lip-syncing than Synthesia at a lower price. My go-to for personalized video messaging or realistic corporate videos.

Sora 2 – OpenAI Video Generator Text-to-video with synchronized audio. What makes it different: it understands physics. Basketballs bounce realistically. The "Cameos" feature lets you insert yourself into any scene with accurate appearance and voice. Not perfect, but the closest we've come to simulating reality.

Veed.io – Online Video Editor An all-in-one online video editor that's intuitive and supports subtitles, translations, stock media, and more. Perfect for polishing social clips or video ads without the learning curve of professional software.

Midjourney – AI Image Generation Transforms text prompts into high-quality artistic images. My go-to for visual storytelling, brand design assets, and unique graphics across social content and presentations. Nothing else matches its aesthetic quality.

Suno – AI Music Generator Create full songs—vocals, instruments, everything—from text prompts. Studio-quality audio at 44.1 kHz, tracks up to 8 minutes. Suno Studio is basically a DAW with AI superpowers. Whether for content or fun, Suno makes anyone a musician.

Clay – Lead Data Enrichment I use Clay to enrich lead data automatically. It scrapes, filters, and augments contact info across data sources—great for sales, hiring, and influencer outreach. If you're doing any kind of prospecting, this saves hours.

Instantly – Cold Outreach at Scale Automates lead scraping, email sending, and response tracking. For growth marketers and sales teams doing cold outreach, Instantly handles the mechanics so you can focus on messaging.

PodPitch – Podcast Booking Tool A tool for getting booked on podcasts. Upload a bio or blog post, and it generates tailored outreach emails and finds podcast matches. If you're building thought leadership, this removes the friction from guest appearances.

Replit – AI-Powered Cloud IDE A cloud-based coding platform with an AI-powered development assistant built in. Whether you're building from scratch or collaborating on a project, Replit speeds up software creation with instant code suggestions and deployment tools. No local setup required.