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Happy Thursday, Future Party. As promised, we’ve got a Sundance gift for you — the official TFP party grid. Get your RSVPs in before they fill up. And if you see us there, come say hi!

DAILY TOP TRENDS

Zipline Takes Off In Texas

Courtesy of Zipline

California-based drone-delivery startup Zipline — famous for facilitating autonomous medical deliveries across Africa over the past decade — rolled out in areas of Texas last year with food delivery.

Why It Soars: Tech giants like Amazon and Alphabet have been trying to get drone deliveries off the ground for years, but have run into a myriad of regulatory, technological, and cultural issues. Zipline’s success in Texas has not only positioned it as a market leader — it may also prove that the future of takeout really could come from the skies.

Between The Flights: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s your burrito!

  • Zipline drones, dubbed the “P2,” have five motors that allow them to seamlessly transition from vertical to horizontal flight — meaning the drone can hover to pick up your food, fly to your house like a traditional aircraft, and then hover again to drop off your meal.

  • They fly higher than a typical drone (cutting down on noise pollution), are packed with sensors to avoid nearby aircraft, and have a range of 24 miles — just far enough to ensure your food is still hot when it arrives.

  • The key innovation of the drone is its “Zip”: a retractable, tethered compartment that “has room for an eight-pound payload roughly the size of a breadbox,” per The Verge. It even includes a propeller to stabilize itself in strong winds.

  • Pickups happen at designated “Zipping Points” — white kiosks where retail workers load deliveries for  the drones to collect. They can be deployed almost anywhere that isn’t blocked from above by a structure or tree.

Last Mile: The Verge notes that Zipline boasts a strong safety record after a cumulative two million deliveries and 125 million miles flown. That track record helped the startup secure a recent $600 million funding round, bringing its valuation to $7.6 billion. Name brands like Chipotle, Walmart, and Buffalo Wild Wings are already available to order through Zipline’s app — which costs about the same as ordering through DoorDash or Uber Eats.

Next up, the company plans to expand into new cities like Houston and Phoenix. So, it may only be a matter of time before we can get our own burrito flown straight to our front door.

Next Order: To avoid another New Jersey-style drone scare, cities may need to create PSAs educating residents before drone deliveries take off in their area. Dropping a few coupons wouldn’t hurt, either.

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xAI Wants To Disrupt The White-Collar Worker

Office buddies // Illustration by Kate Walker

xAI is allegedly building “human emulators” — AI agents that act like human employees.

Why It Hurts: It’s certainly no secret that companies are using AI to optimize their operations and lower headcount… but xAI’s gambit could mark the first clear example of a company actively replacing individual workers with AI agents that pretend to be human. If adopted beyond the company’s walls, the approach could have significant ramifications for the culture of work.

Behind The Code: xAI engineer — well, now ex-xAI engineer — Sulaiman Ghori dropped some bombs on the Relentless podcast.

  • xAI is developing “human emulators” designed to mimic — and ultimately replace — human staff at the company.

  • The company is already testing the emulators internally, treating them as if they’re normal human employees.

  • It’s also building emulators for select enterprise clients, a process that involves watching specific employees at the company doing the very jobs the bots are meant to replace. Dystopian.

  • Ghori says the company plans to run as many as one million emulators at once, potentially leasing compute power from privately owned Teslas while the cars are parked. Dystopian passive income.

Double Take: Unsurprisingly, the emulators are already causing chaos inside the company, triggering situations where humans didn’t realize they were reporting to an AI — or that a coworker on their team was really a bot. In some cases, the emulators have even hallucinated, asking human employees to come to their desk to chat about something… only for the employee to discover that it was actually an AI when they couldn’t find the desk. Hilarious.

The Future: We may all soon find ourselves double-checking Slack messages for signs that our work buddy — or even our client — is nothing more than lines of code.

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DEEP DIVES

53.6% of you voted Yes, in the past in yesterday’s poll: Have you ever worked a night shift or job?

“As an EMT, we had 12-hour shifts.”

“Medicine is a 24/7 job. All hours of the day must be covered.”

“I’m a night person, so it was a perfect fit for my energy levels. ”

“Worked 2:30 to 12:30 at a zoo — loved it. No crowds, no bosses, just the animals. It could get spooky at times with the weird noises they make at night.”

“I’m 66, and I’ve been working nights most of my life.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

QUICK HITS

→ Entertainment / Media

🎮 Ubisoft is reorganizing into five genre-specific “Creative Houses,” a move that has resulted in the cancellation of six upcoming games.

🎤 Taylor Swift has become the youngest female artist to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

🎥 Indie film-fintech studio Sequel is launching at the Sundance Film Festival with the premiere of The Musical.

→ Technology

💄 French skincare brand L’Occitane is planning to go public in the US after a 14-year run on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

🛒 The new hot trend is “No Buy January,” with 12% of US adults giving it a try this year.

₿ Diner chain Steak ‘n Shake will soon allow employees to receive hourly bonuses in Bitcoin.

→ Creator Economy

💰 Snap has decided to settle a wide-ranging tech-addiction lawsuit that also plans to take Meta, YouTube, and TikTok to trial.

🤝 A new startup called Artie — founded by former Google and YouTube execs — plans to connect brands with digital creators and filmmakers to fund projects.

📱 YouTube is planning to allow creators to make AI-generated Shorts using their likeness.

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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited, Polled, & Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.

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