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Grok Buys Cursor, MidJourney Goes Hardware, Hermes Agent & Evaluation-Driven Development
MidJourney — the AI image company — just quit image generation to build 50,000 spas that scan your body slice by slice. Then the week got weirder.
Co-hosts: Shimin Zhang, Dan Lasky, Rahul Yadav.
▸ SpaceX buys Cursor — Elon's SpaceX (xAI/"Grok Cursor") is acquiring Cursor for $60B in Class A common stock — a ~60x multiple on ~$1B revenue, largely to buy an enterprise foothold. (Shimin: the first real sign of an AI-tool consolidation phase.)
▸ MidJourney goes hardware — the image-gen pioneer is licensing micro-ultrasound chips to build 50,000 body-scan spas (first one: SF, 2027), aiming for a billion scans a month. Fully private, no VC backers, a self-described "community research lab." Terabytes/second — ~500 hours of HD video per single second of scan.
▸ Tool Shed: Hermes Agent (Nous Research) — the plugin-maximalist opposite of a minimal harness like Pi: built-in memory, a self-learning skill loop, cron scheduling, swappable memory providers, and ~20 chat channels out of the box. Dan: "parachuting in with sixteen crates of supplies and a film crew."
▸ Is AI ruining our skills? (Nature) — physicians' precancerous-lesion detection fell from 28.4% to 22.4% once the AI tool was removed; 52 engineers scored 50% on understanding their own code with AI vs 67% without. Cognitive debt is showing up in the data.
▸ Claude Code is a video game (Provi.me) — the "one more prompt" loop that keeps you up three hours past bedtime, and why AI finally made B2B SaaS addictive. Plus the "agent dice" repo: roll a natural 20 and a stop hook makes the agent reflect and write itself a skill.
▸ Evaluation-Driven Development (Decoding AI) — treat every AI feature as a hypothesis and gate the PR on an offline eval pipeline (built on Opik) instead of unit tests. Gold-standard vs synthetic datasets, code-metric vs LLM-as-judge evaluators, and an "aggression" dial for how big a jerk your reviewer is. (Shimin: Newtonian physics → quantum mechanics.)
▸ Two Minutes to Midnight — ChatGPT slips under 50% share (46.4%; Gemini 27.7%, Claude 10.3%), Nvidia raises $25B in its first bond deal since 2021, and Ed Zitron walks OpenAI's FT-verified financials ($38.5B loss in 2025). ~2B users — one in four people on Earth; no 10x left. Clock moved up to 5:00.
⏱ Chapters
00:00 Cold Open & Welcome
01:50 News: SpaceX Buys Cursor for $60B
04:46 News: MidJourney Pivots to Body-Scan Spas
11:45 Tool Shed: Hermes Agent (Nous Research)
19:54 Post-Processing: Is AI Ruining Our Skills? (Nature)
27:13 Post-Processing: Claude Code Is a Video Game
35:23 Post-Processing: Evaluation-Driven Development (EDD)
41:44 Two Minutes to Midnight: ChatGPT Under 50%, Nvidia Debt, OpenAI's Numbers
55:06 Outro
🔗 Articles we discussed
News:
• SpaceX to acquire Cursor — CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/spacex-spcx-cursor-acquisition-ipo.html
• MidJourney's medical pivot — MidJourney: https://www.midjourney.com/medical/blogpost
Tool Shed:
• Hermes Agent docs — Nous Research: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/
Post-Processing:
• Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in — Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1
• Claude Code is a video game — Provi.me: https://provi.me/cc-like-video-games
• How Evaluation-Driven Development (EDD) works — Decoding AI (Paul Easton & Alejandro Aboy): https://www.decodingai.com/p/5b766861-0001-494f-a37f-4d4eb104dcfa
Two Minutes to Midnight:
• ChatGPT's market share slips below 50% for the first time — TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/16/chatgpts-market-share-slips-below-50-for-first-time/
• Nvidia seeks to raise over $25B in first bond deal since 2021 — Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/chipmaker-nvidia-seeks-to-raise-over-25b-in-first-bond-deal-since-2021/
• Exclusive: OpenAI's financials — Where's Your Ed At (Ed Zitron): https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/
🎙 About ADI Pod
ADI Pod (Artificial Developer Intelligence) is a weekly podcast about AI and software development for working developers. We go through hundreds of links and dozens of newsletters each week so you don't have to. Hosts: Shimin Zhang, Dan Lasky, Rahul Yadav. New episodes Tuesdays.
• https://www.adipod.ai
• [email protected]
If something here changed your mind or gave you something to try on Monday, hit subscribe and leave a comment with what you tried.
View all episodes
By Shimin Zhang, Dan Lasky, & Rahul YadavMidJourney — the AI image company — just quit image generation to build 50,000 spas that scan your body slice by slice. Then the week got weirder.
Co-hosts: Shimin Zhang, Dan Lasky, Rahul Yadav.
▸ SpaceX buys Cursor — Elon's SpaceX (xAI/"Grok Cursor") is acquiring Cursor for $60B in Class A common stock — a ~60x multiple on ~$1B revenue, largely to buy an enterprise foothold. (Shimin: the first real sign of an AI-tool consolidation phase.)
▸ MidJourney goes hardware — the image-gen pioneer is licensing micro-ultrasound chips to build 50,000 body-scan spas (first one: SF, 2027), aiming for a billion scans a month. Fully private, no VC backers, a self-described "community research lab." Terabytes/second — ~500 hours of HD video per single second of scan.
▸ Tool Shed: Hermes Agent (Nous Research) — the plugin-maximalist opposite of a minimal harness like Pi: built-in memory, a self-learning skill loop, cron scheduling, swappable memory providers, and ~20 chat channels out of the box. Dan: "parachuting in with sixteen crates of supplies and a film crew."
▸ Is AI ruining our skills? (Nature) — physicians' precancerous-lesion detection fell from 28.4% to 22.4% once the AI tool was removed; 52 engineers scored 50% on understanding their own code with AI vs 67% without. Cognitive debt is showing up in the data.
▸ Claude Code is a video game (Provi.me) — the "one more prompt" loop that keeps you up three hours past bedtime, and why AI finally made B2B SaaS addictive. Plus the "agent dice" repo: roll a natural 20 and a stop hook makes the agent reflect and write itself a skill.
▸ Evaluation-Driven Development (Decoding AI) — treat every AI feature as a hypothesis and gate the PR on an offline eval pipeline (built on Opik) instead of unit tests. Gold-standard vs synthetic datasets, code-metric vs LLM-as-judge evaluators, and an "aggression" dial for how big a jerk your reviewer is. (Shimin: Newtonian physics → quantum mechanics.)
▸ Two Minutes to Midnight — ChatGPT slips under 50% share (46.4%; Gemini 27.7%, Claude 10.3%), Nvidia raises $25B in its first bond deal since 2021, and Ed Zitron walks OpenAI's FT-verified financials ($38.5B loss in 2025). ~2B users — one in four people on Earth; no 10x left. Clock moved up to 5:00.
⏱ Chapters
00:00 Cold Open & Welcome
01:50 News: SpaceX Buys Cursor for $60B
04:46 News: MidJourney Pivots to Body-Scan Spas
11:45 Tool Shed: Hermes Agent (Nous Research)
19:54 Post-Processing: Is AI Ruining Our Skills? (Nature)
27:13 Post-Processing: Claude Code Is a Video Game
35:23 Post-Processing: Evaluation-Driven Development (EDD)
41:44 Two Minutes to Midnight: ChatGPT Under 50%, Nvidia Debt, OpenAI's Numbers
55:06 Outro
🔗 Articles we discussed
News:
• SpaceX to acquire Cursor — CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/16/spacex-spcx-cursor-acquisition-ipo.html
• MidJourney's medical pivot — MidJourney: https://www.midjourney.com/medical/blogpost
Tool Shed:
• Hermes Agent docs — Nous Research: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/
Post-Processing:
• Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in — Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1
• Claude Code is a video game — Provi.me: https://provi.me/cc-like-video-games
• How Evaluation-Driven Development (EDD) works — Decoding AI (Paul Easton & Alejandro Aboy): https://www.decodingai.com/p/5b766861-0001-494f-a37f-4d4eb104dcfa
Two Minutes to Midnight:
• ChatGPT's market share slips below 50% for the first time — TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/16/chatgpts-market-share-slips-below-50-for-first-time/
• Nvidia seeks to raise over $25B in first bond deal since 2021 — Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/chipmaker-nvidia-seeks-to-raise-over-25b-in-first-bond-deal-since-2021/
• Exclusive: OpenAI's financials — Where's Your Ed At (Ed Zitron): https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/
🎙 About ADI Pod
ADI Pod (Artificial Developer Intelligence) is a weekly podcast about AI and software development for working developers. We go through hundreds of links and dozens of newsletters each week so you don't have to. Hosts: Shimin Zhang, Dan Lasky, Rahul Yadav. New episodes Tuesdays.
• https://www.adipod.ai
• [email protected]
If something here changed your mind or gave you something to try on Monday, hit subscribe and leave a comment with what you tried.