3 Shifts Edition (Feb 14 2025): The fight against “forever chemicals”, Tech unemployment reaches 5.7%, “Deep research” tools everywhere

Hi everyone – welcome to your [AI-generated] 3 Shifts Edition.

Our first Shift delves into the growing sentiment against “forever chemicals” – known as PFAS – among policymakers and consumers. Recent months have seen state-level bans of  products with PFAS as well as a wave of new PFAS-related consumer lawsuits.

Next, tech-sector unemployment recently jumped up to 5.7% in Jan 2025, according to a WSJ report. The layoffs are being attributed to factors such as AI, high interest rates constraining growth, past overhiring and current above-market compensation, continued pushback against remote work, and R&D tax-deduction changes.

Finally, OpenAI’s Deep Research is getting rave reviews and it isn’t the only “deep research” tool out there. There’s also Google’s Deep Research, Perplexity’s Deep Research, Hugging Face’s Open Deep Research, and other open alternatives from individuals. It indicates a growing recognition of the vast usefulness of an AI-powered research agent.

If you haven’t already, check out the final report in our series collaboration with TDK Ventures: “The Opinionated CVC: A perspective on strategy, process and people.” And as always, if you have any feedback for us, feel free to hit ‘reply’ and let us know what you think.

Enjoy.

– Tam

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