Keen On

You've heard it before and you'll hear it again. AI is a gold rush. It will change everything. But 2025 is different, That Was The Week tech newsletter publisher Keith Teare argues. This is the year that the AI gold rush is changing everything. In our reflection of the first six months of 2025, Keith argues that we're witnessing a fundamental "phase shift" - not just another tech cycle, but an inflection point where scale becomes a necessity for survival. From Meta's $100 million developer deals to the consolidation of 80% of venture capital into just five firms, from Cloudflare's revolutionary "toll booth" economy replacing advertising models to the tokenization of private markets through platforms like Robinhood, the rules of Silicon Valley are being rewritten. As graduates face an employment crisis and AI superstars command unprecedented compensation, Keith and I debate whether this transformation represents capitalism's natural evolution or a dangerous concentration of power that could reshape the global