This digest compiles the latest from The Verge.
Today’s The Verge Roundup
A jury is about to decide the fate of Ticketmaster
9 Apr 2026, 2:01 pm by Lauren Feiner
Consumer complaints about Ticketmaster are so voluminous at state attorneys general offices that Pennsylvania’s comes with an explicit plea for residents lodging a grievance about the company to be patient for a response. That kind of pressure has driven more than 30 states to push forward with claims that Live Nation-Ticketmaster illegally monopolized parts of the concert industry, even when the federal government settled its claims. Soon it will be up to a jury to decide if the ways Live Nation-Ticketmaster conducts its business is not just frustrating, but also illegal.
An antitrust trial that began March 2nd against Live Nation-Ticketm …
The AI industry’s race for profits is now existential
9 Apr 2026, 2:00 pm by Nilay Patel
Today on Decoder, let’s talk about the looming AI monetization cliff, and whether some of the biggest companies in the space can become real, profitable businesses before they careen right off it.
My guest today is Hayden Field, who’s our senior AI reporter here at The Verge. She’s been keeping close tabs on both Anthropic and OpenAI, and how these two companies in particular tell us a whole lot about the AI industry in 2026.
You’ve certainly heard a version of the monetization cliff story before. The biggest AI firms are built off the back of hundreds of billions in capital investment, and they’re linked to even greater amounts of forward-looking investment in data center build-out, chips, and other infrastructure spend. At some point, the profits have to materialize, or the bubble pops. Maybe AGI arrives, maybe the economy crashes, who knows.Â
You’ve heard me ask some version of this question to scores of CEOs here on this show, and a majority of them have hinted toward the bubble popping — they think some companies will fail in spectacular fashion, some will succeed, and the opportunities, especially the money, are simply too big to ignore. We’re doing this, whether we want to or not — the market depends on it.
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So these last few weeks have felt like a very important inflection point, as both Anthropic and OpenAI have started to react to the reality of needing to go public — needing to make money,
The catalyst for this change is AI agents, and products like Claude Code and Cowork, as well as the open-source OpenClaw and OpenAI’s Codex, have radically changed how these companies are thinking about their resources. And this is starting to affect how they behave — the products they support or suddenly kill, the restrictions they impose on customers, and the money they’re willing to burn toward their next big milestone.Â
That’s because agents are valuable to customers right now, but agents also use far more compute. So the way people are using agents is burning tokens at a rate way faster than these companies anticipated, and that’s causing them to make hard decisions.
We saw this most evidently last month when OpenAI abruptly killed its video-generation app Sora, ditching a $1 billion Disney licensing deal in the process. Why? It costs too much to run, and OpenAI needs the compute for Codex. We saw it again just last week, when Anthropic decided it would no longer let Claude users burn through compute resources using the OpenClaw agent framework through a standard subscription plan, instead forcing those users onto pay-as-you-go plans, which cost substantially more.
As you’ll hear Hayden explain here, these are glimmers of a make-or-break moment for the AI industry, as both Anthropic and OpenAI barrel toward two of the biggest IPOs in history. And the pressure on these companies to make money has never been this intense.
The projections these companies have made, which just this week were leaked to the Wall Street Journal, tell a story of mind-boggling growth, to the tune of hundreds of billions in revenue and profitability by the end of the decade. But the most important questions now are can the AI companies pull this off, and what compromises will they make to reach that goal and avoid crashing and burning?Â
Okay: Verge senior policy reporter Hayden Field on the AI monetization cliff and the race to profitability. Here we go.
If you’d like to read more about what we discussed in this episode, check out these links:
- The vibes are off at OpenAI | The Verge
- Anthropic essentially bans OpenClaw from Claude | The Verge
- Why OpenAI killed Sora | The Verge
- OpenAI just bought TBPN | The Verge
- National poll shows voters like AI less than ICE | The Verge
- The spiraling cost of making AI | WSJ
- OpenAI’s Fidji Simo taking leave amid exec shake-up | Wired
- OpenAI raises another $122B at $850B valuation | The Verge
Questions or comments about this episode? Hit us up at decoder@theverge.com. We really do read every email!
The Exit 8 movie is even better if you play the game first
9 Apr 2026, 1:00 pm by Andrew Webster
There’s an intriguing new video game adaptation to watch in theaters – and no, it’s not that one. Exit 8, based on the game of the same name, hits the big screen on April 10th, and it’s part of a burgeoning trend of horror movies directly inspired by indie games and liminal scares on YouTube. (See: the surprise success of Iron Lung and the upcoming Backrooms feature.) It’s also the rare adaptation where I’d highly recommend playing the game before seeing the movie. Doing so makes the surreal experience of the film into something even stranger, and the good news is playing the game is a very easy thing to do.
The game is a curious project to …
Waymo is offering to help cities fix their potholes
9 Apr 2026, 1:00 pm by Andrew J. Hawkins
In recent months, some cities have sought a new recruit in their forever war against potholes: Waymo.
Municipal officials in multiple cities where Waymo operates have reached out to the robotaxi operator for help in locating potholes on their streets, assuming that Waymo kept such data. Fortunately for them, Waymo does, and it has recently decided to launch a pilot program, along with Google’s Waze, to share its pothole data with city officials.
The mission is to make city streets safer to drive, which is desirable for both human and robot drivers. And it could help Waymo’s broader effort to build positive relationships with cities, espec …
Amazon’s Starlink competitor Leo gets a new date
9 Apr 2026, 12:53 pm by Thomas Ricker
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company’s space-internet service Leo (formerly known as Project Kuiper) will “launch in mid-2026.” I’m going to assume that means proper commercial availability since the company already announced the start of an “enterprise preview” at the end of 2025, when the service was supposed to originally launch.
Unlike SpaceX’s Starlink service, Amazon doesn’t (yet) have its own fleet of rockets to regularly send Leo satellites into low-Earth orbit. That’s meant hitching rides with a variety of launch partners, including SpaceX, until Jeff Bezos’ own reusable New Glenn rocket is fully operational.
Amazon has FCC app …
I tested three Windows laptops in the MacBook Neo’s price range — there’s no contest
9 Apr 2026, 11:00 am by Antonio G. Di Benedetto
When the MacBook Neo arrived last month, I knew Windows laptop makers were in trouble. For $599, the Neo offers fantastic build quality and solid performance in a sleek and ultra-portable package. Windows laptops in this price range tend to be ugly, cheap-feeling, and a little slow.
Despite years of rumors, the MacBook Neo still seemed to take the Windows world by surprise. I expect proper competitors to pop up just as soon as the companies can manage, but I wanted to see what the competition in the PC space is like now.
So I asked a bunch of laptop manufacturers to send me their best answers to the MacBook Neo.
The MacBook Neo is a 13-i …
Google makes it easy to deepfake yourself
9 Apr 2026, 10:53 am by Robert Hart
YouTube Shorts is rolling out a new AI-powered feature giving creators an easy way to realistically clone themselves on camera. The launch, hinted at earlier this year, reflects the platform’s fraught relationship with AI-generated content, adding more generative features while struggling to contain AI slop, deepfake scams, and impersonations.
YouTube says the new tool will let users create a digital version of themselves, called an avatar, that can be inserted into existing Shorts videos or used to generate entirely new ones. The company said avatars will “look and sound like you,” framing them as a safer and more secure way to use AI to …
Spotify now lets you turn off all its videos
9 Apr 2026, 10:33 am by Dominic Preston
Spotify is adding new toggles to stop any and all video from playing inside the app, for both music and podcasts. The controls are rolling out worldwide, work across all platforms and devices, and can be used by managers of Family Plans to limit video content for every member on the subscription.
The new controls haven’t arrived on my UK account or devices yet, but will appear under the “Content and display” settings on a phone, or the “Display” section on desktop. The existing toggle to disable Canvas clips – the short, looping, autoplay videos that Spotify added to the app in 2019 – is joined by a new toggle that disables access to music …
Amflow’s latest e-bikes with Avinox motors raise the bar again
9 Apr 2026, 8:30 am by Thomas Ricker
Amflow, the e-bike brand spun out of DJI, is back with two impressive electric mountain bike ranges built around its incredibly dense Avinox motors. The e-MTBs aim to break the traditional tradeoff between power, range, and weight.
Even better, if Amflow’s bikes don’t appeal to you then over 60 other e-bike makers have adopted Avinox drive systems, including Canyon, Mondraker, and Pivot. That should give you ample choice and puts competitors like Bosch firmly on notice.
The flagship Amflow PX (weighing around 20kg / 44lbs) and the Amflow PR (weighing around 22kg / 49lbs) are powered by Avinox’s new M2S and M2 drive systems, delivering up t …
Gemini gets notebooks to help you organize projects
9 Apr 2026, 12:06 am by Jay Peters
Google’s Gemini is getting a feature called “notebooks” to help you organize things about certain topics in a single place while using the AI chatbot, the company announced on Wednesday. You can pull in things like files, past conversations, and custom instructions into notebooks that Gemini can then use as context while you’re talking with it.
Notebooks sound a lot like ChatGPT’s Projects feature, which launched in 2024 and similarly lets users store things about a certain topic in one spot. Google says to “think of notebooks as personal knowledge bases shared across Google products, starting in Gemini.” Gemini’s Notebooks also sync with …
End of today’s The Verge roundup.
