The Pulse #131: why is every company is launching its own coding agent?
Also: CVE program nearly axed, restored at the 11th hour, Rippling rescinds signed offer the candidate-to-join already handed in their resignation, and more
The Pulse is a series covering insights, patterns, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Notice an interesting event or trend? Send me a message.
Today, we cover:
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Industry pulse. Apple and NVIDIA might (or might not!) get tariff exemptions, US advertising revenue could drop, OpenAI releases coding model GPT-4.1, Lovable rallies dev support after Figma’s cease-and-decist, frustration inside Apple with Siri, and more.
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Every company is launching its own coding agent. Just this week, Canva, X, OpenAI and WordPress have all launched their coding agents – joining the likes of Lovable, Bolt, Replit, Vercel and others with similar offerings. These agents are becoming trivially easy to build, so expect more of them to come to small and large companies and products alike.
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CVE program nearly axed, then restored at the 11th hour. One of the most important security disclosure and categorization programs, CVE, narrowly avoided being shut down after a last-minute budget cut from the US Department of Defense. The security community now has 11 months to come up with a plan B, should CVE funding be cut permanently.
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Rippling rescinds signed offer after asking candidate to hand in resignation letter. HR tech Rippling interviewed a candidate for a senior position for months, had her talk with VPs and SVPs, extended an offer which the candidate signed – then rescinded the offer and ghosted the candidate after the soon-to-join employee resigned from her Big Tech job. A reminder on how changing jobs has become a lot more risky than before – and how companies rescinding signed jobs are, sadly, more common than before.
Industry Pulse
Apple and NVIDIA get 145% tariff exception – or do they?
One highly visible and immediate impact on tech of US President Trump’s 145% tariff on China and 10% for the rest of the world, would be the effect on prices of iPhones and Android smartphones, and also chips like GPUs and CPUs. Around 75% of iPhones are manufactured in China and the rest in India, while most GPUs and CPUs are shipped from Taiwan. But in a last-minute reprieve on Friday, 11 April, as Trump’s tariffs took effect, smartphones, chips, laptops, hard drives, and flat-screen displays were suddenly exempted from tariffs, at least temporarily.
This enabled the likes of Apple, NVIDIA, Samsung, and other hardware manufacturers, to breathe a sigh of relief. But this state lasted a mere 48 hours: on Sunday, 13 April, Trump said he will announce new tariffs on semiconductors in the coming days. No one knows what these will be, or how they will be calculated.
Chaotic policy changes from one day to the next strongly suggest that trade rules in the US are going to be unpredictable, going forward. This looks certain to impact business confidence, and could hit consumer spending – including on tech – because it’s a fact of life that people don’t spend money when they feel anxious or uncertain about the future. Tech may have got a temporary reprieve from tariffs, but the sector is unlikely to avoid at least some of the wider consequences of the White House’s approach to trade.
US advertising revenue drop thanks to China tariffs
Retail products from China are now subject to 145% tariffs, with two outcomes: