# Odyssey hits $1.45B valuation, State Farm Cuts Commissions 40% AI Shift

An episode of [AI Chat: AI News on Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1669990482), 17 Jun 2026, 18 min.

Audio: https://content.rss.com/episodes/365073/2923764/ai-chat-podcast/2026_06_17_21_32_08_b66b68f0-1b40-41a2-9ac5-25796d0f19f1.mp3

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! In this episode, we discuss State Farm's controversial decision to reduce commissions for its sales agents due to advancements in AI technology. Additionally, we explore Allbirds' unexpected name change to Smartbirds as they pivot to AI infrastructure, the launch of Pinterest's AI shopping app, and the public's rising skepticism towards AI. Chapters 00:00 Introduction 02:00 State Farm's Commission Cuts 04:12 Allbirds Rebrands to Smartbirds 09:24 Achieves $1.45B Valuation 15:34 Pew Research on AI Sentiment 16:42 Social Media Algorithm Control Show Links • Get Images in Claude with the AI Box MCP: https://aibox.ai/mcp • How I Grow and Scale My Business with AI: https://www.skool.com/aihustle • Get the AI Chat Daily Newsletter: https://www.aichatdaily.com/newsletter

## Transcript

[0:02] Welcome to the AI Chat Podcast. I'm your host,
[0:04] Jaden Schaefer. Every day I cover cutting -edge
[0:07] AI news and talk with the leaders behind it,
[0:09] breaking down what it means for your life and
[0:11] business. Welcome to the podcast. Today State
[0:17] Farm is under fire for cutting commissions to
[0:21] some of its insuring agents because of AI. We
[0:25] have some news that Allbirds is not going to
[0:27] be called Allbirds anymore. They're focusing,
[0:29] they're shifting their name, and they're going
[0:31] to be focusing on AI infrastructure, a wild switch
[0:34] up and pivot for that company. A company called
[0:36] Odysseus has just hit $1 .45 billion in valuation.
[0:41] Amazon and AMD are both betting that their world
[0:44] models are valuable. And only 16 % of Americans
[0:47] see AI as a net positive, according to some Pew
[0:50] research. And that's in a specific subset of
[0:52] this research, but there's some pretty incredible
[0:54] statistics there. Threads, Instagram, and TikTok
[0:57] are all giving users the ability to adjust our
[1:00] algorithms ourselves and not just have AI pick
[1:03] purely what we want. I want to talk a little
[1:05] bit about where we see that going, especially
[1:07] when one of their competitors, Pinterest, has
[1:10] just launched a brand new app called Ask Pinterest.
[1:13] This is a standalone AI shopping app. And it's
[1:16] interesting because this is a big pivot from
[1:18] what Pinterest has very publicly sort of been
[1:20] opposed to AI in the past. I am super excited
[1:22] to announce that AI Box is officially launching.
[1:25] an MCP, which means that if you use a tool like
[1:28] Claude and it doesn't have audio and it doesn't
[1:31] have image generation, you can use the MCP of
[1:33] AI box to get the image generation and audio
[1:36] generation inside of Claude. Or if you're using
[1:38] something like ChatGPT, which is about to kill
[1:40] the Sora video generation, you can get Google's
[1:42] VO3 video model inside of ChatGPT and use our
[1:46] MCP to get access to all of the AI models inside
[1:49] of the AI tools that you already use. If you
[1:52] want to check it out, I'm leaving a link in the
[1:53] description to AI. dot AI slash MCP. This is
[1:57] something we are super, super excited about.
[2:00] It is $8 .99 a month and you get access to over
[2:02] 80 different AI models, image, audio, text, video,
[2:05] music, and you get them all inside of any of
[2:08] the AI tools that you already use. So go check
[2:10] it out. I hope that saves you a ton of time and
[2:12] money. Okay, let's talk about the first story
[2:15] here, and that is State Farm. There's recent
[2:17] backlash. There was a writer, Gene Eaglesham,
[2:20] who said, State Farm's AI -driven plan to impose
[2:22] a new contract on its 19 ,000 sales agents is
[2:26] causing an uproar. This was written in the Wall
[2:28] Street Journal. And essentially what's happening
[2:31] is there's this huge backlash because there is
[2:33] a change that is going to reduce the income by
[2:36] up to 40 % of these sales agents over at State
[2:39] Farm. It's also going to cut their benefits.
[2:41] And this is all part of a strategy to adapt AI
[2:44] advancements. And State Farm right now is really
[2:46] trying to take on Progressive, who has overcome
[2:48] or who has basically surpassed State Farm as
[2:51] the largest personal auto insurer. Now, I don't
[2:54] know what part of the world I'm in. I use Geico.
[2:56] I just asked all of the different car companies
[2:58] out. was the cheapest one whenever I called around
[3:00] State Farm and Progressive were way more expensive.
[3:02] So I have no idea why those are the two biggest.
[3:05] Maybe you guys can tell me if you listen. What
[3:07] I will say is as someone that is not in this
[3:09] industry or doesn't know much about this industry
[3:12] at all, other than I'm a customer of it, I personally,
[3:15] when I hear that a sales agent is going to get
[3:17] their benefits cut by 40 % or their income or
[3:20] their commission. Sadly, I actually that doesn't
[3:24] bother me. I don't want to pay any commission
[3:26] to a sales agent. I just have to get insurance
[3:28] on my car. I really appreciate the way Geico
[3:30] lets me just go on the website, put what I want,
[3:33] select it. you know, make all of the adjustments
[3:36] I want and just click buy. And I think in some
[3:39] cases, I actually do have to call the Geico agents
[3:40] to get stuff set up. But it always feels like
[3:43] this is kind of a bureaucracy. It's always kind
[3:45] of something that has been regulated into existence.
[3:48] I don't really want that regulation. I wish it
[3:51] was more free market with insurance. But because
[3:53] legally, I'm required to get insurance, I just
[3:55] want the cheapest insurance possible. And that
[3:57] is me. So anyways, if I can help do things cheaper
[4:00] for the consumer, which is myself, I'm happy
[4:03] now for people. that are, you know, getting their
[4:05] income cut, I am sorry, that is sad. And, you
[4:08] know, I resonate there, but I truly believe in
[4:11] a free market. And if we can make this better
[4:14] for the consumer, that is kind of what I would
[4:16] say is the best outcome. So probably not a very
[4:19] popular opinion, but that's my thoughts on that.
[4:21] Okay, Allbirds is changing the name. This was,
[4:24] you know, a kind of a trendy shoe brand that
[4:26] came out of Silicon Valley. They're changing
[4:28] their name to Smartbirds. This is based in San
[4:30] Francisco. They've gotten a new chief executive.
[4:33] that's going to be helping them with this. And
[4:35] they're switching from shoes to AI infrastructure.
[4:37] This was not a shift that anyone expected, but
[4:40] essentially what's happened is I believe they
[4:41] were public. Their stock was cratering. It was
[4:44] at all time lows. You know, they were becoming
[4:46] unpopular. People were just worried this company
[4:47] was going to get delisted. And so they decided
[4:49] to sell off the rights to Allbirds, their shoe
[4:52] brand, take the money that they were able to
[4:54] get from that and just dump it all straight into
[4:57] AI infrastructure. So Nadia Carlson is going
[5:01] to be in charge. the company. The former CEO,
[5:04] Joe Vernancio, is going to be leaving in April.
[5:08] They said that they were going to do this rebrand.
[5:10] So I remember this. They actually, I think, said
[5:11] they were going to call it like New Bird AI or
[5:13] something, but it appears that they're actually
[5:15] going to be just calling it Smart Bird. But in
[5:18] any case, the new CEO, her background includes
[5:21] a stint as CEO at a Danish center for AI innovation.
[5:27] And I think they have some people that had experience
[5:30] over at Amazon. So this is... going to be incredibly
[5:33] interesting. Here's a post that Nadia, the new
[5:35] CEO, posted on LinkedIn. She said, for many organizations,
[5:39] shared infrastructure simply isn't enough, whether
[5:41] driven by performance, cost security, or sovereignty
[5:43] needs. They need dedicated infrastructure, but
[5:45] they shouldn't have to become experts in GPUs,
[5:47] networking data centers, and cluster operations
[5:49] to realize the benefit of AI. So they are fully
[5:51] switching all of their branding, all of their
[5:54] speak into just purely data centers. It's crazy
[5:58] just to see a company that they were publicly
[6:00] traded. They had some sort of assets and they
[6:03] realized that this company wasn't going to be
[6:05] successful long term. They cut their losses,
[6:07] took the money and just started doing data centers.
[6:09] That's a crazy pivot for a shoe brand, if I'm
[6:11] being honest. Okay. Odysseus has just hit a $1
[6:14] .45 billion valuation. Amazon and AMD are both
[6:18] investing in them. It was a new round, which
[6:21] was led by Natural Capital. And then you also
[6:24] had GV that was participating as well. This is
[6:27] a company that was just started in 2023, and
[6:29] they have now raised $337 million in total funding.
[6:34] AWS is now Odysseus' preferred cloud provider,
[6:37] which, you know, this is how we see these deals,
[6:38] right? Amazon's going to put the money in, and
[6:40] they expect that they're going to be... using
[6:42] their services, AWS. So you can see Amazon, Microsoft,
[6:45] Google, they put money into all of these different
[6:47] companies, NVIDIA even, right? And they're like,
[6:49] hey, you gotta make sure you're using NVIDIA
[6:50] GPUs. But in this case, because Amazon got to
[6:53] them before NVIDIA did on this round of funding,
[6:56] they're actually going to be optimizing their
[6:59] models to be trained and to be run on Tranium
[7:02] chips and not NVIDIA GPUs. So Amazon is putting
[7:06] a little heat to NVIDIA by investing in companies
[7:09] and getting them to use their Tranium chips.
[7:11] set of NVIDIA GPUs. The founders are Oliver Cameron
[7:14] and Jeff Hawk, and they come from the self -driving.
[7:17] Cameron was at Voyage and Cruise. Hawk was over
[7:19] at Wave. They have a bunch of amazing angel investors.
[7:21] This is a very serious company. They have Jeff
[7:23] Dean, Elad Gil, Gary Tan, Guillaume Rauch, and
[7:27] Cruise founder Kyle Volk. This is a company I
[7:30] would definitely keep your eyes on and, you know,
[7:31] incredible to pass in that billion dollar valuation.
[7:34] So there was some research done by Pew and a
[7:37] certain subset of the people they surveyed. found
[7:40] that only 16 % of them saw AI as a net positive.
[7:45] This is pretty wild. If you look at this, they
[7:48] say, you know, this, you know, AI doesn't have,
[7:51] it doesn't expect to be a net positive impact
[7:53] on society over the next 20 years. 40 % expect
[7:57] a negative impact, according to Pew. 44 % of
[8:00] US adults now use ChatGPT, which is double the
[8:03] amount when they did the review or kind of the
[8:06] poll in 2023. So the share is up. Gemini is at
[8:10] 24%. Copilot is at 17%. According to this study
[8:15] that Pew did, 67%. don't believe the US government
[8:18] is going to meaningfully regulate AI. 59 % don't
[8:22] trust companies to develop it safely. About 25
[8:24] % of Americans use AI chatbots every single day.
[8:27] But about 75 % of people that are 65 and older
[8:30] say they never use them. So, I mean, this is
[8:32] a big difference. Younger people are heavily
[8:34] skewed to using these tools. But among people
[8:37] that were under 30 years old, only 14 % of them
[8:40] think that AI will be a net positive. This is
[8:42] by far the most skeptical age cohort in the survey.
[8:45] And I mean, a lot of these people, you have to
[8:47] think about it, are in school. They're early
[8:49] on in their careers. They're seeing how this
[8:50] is becoming harder to get jobs out of school.
[8:54] Junior level positions are... not hiring as much.
[8:57] So I mean, this makes a lot of sense. And it's
[9:00] interesting to see where this sits. But according
[9:02] to all of this, we also saw that Meta AI was
[9:05] at 14 % usage, Grok was at 8%, and Claude was
[9:08] at 6%. And Character AI was at 3%. Now, what's
[9:12] interesting to me here is, I mean, we hear a
[9:13] lot about Claude, you probably hear me yelling
[9:15] at the microphone all day long. Claude, as Sam
[9:18] Altman once said, is an expensive tool for rich
[9:21] people. Now, I don't know if that's super true,
[9:24] but what you do have to remember is Claude is
[9:26] very useful for a certain subset of white -collar
[9:29] workers that are doing things on their computer.
[9:32] Claude is not useful or very used, maybe. Maybe
[9:35] it is useful for everybody, but it's not very
[9:37] used by the entire general population. According
[9:39] to the survey, only 6 % of people are using Claude,
[9:42] where you have a much bigger percent, 44%, that
[9:45] are using ChatGP. So ChatGPT has way more usage,
[9:49] but Cloud is making, you know, possibly potentially
[9:52] more money because people are paying $200 a month
[9:55] for Cloud plus API credits. So, you know, Cloud
[9:59] has a very high, you know, they do have a $20
[10:03] a month tier, but they have a lot of people on
[10:04] their $100 and $200 a month tiers. So Cloud is
[10:06] making a lot of money from that, which is a big
[10:09] jump. Okay. Threads and Instagram and TikTok
[10:13] are all giving users a little bit more control
[10:16] over the algorithm that they see instead of this
[10:18] just being purely, you know, AI picking that
[10:21] for you. Although, you know, the AI is still
[10:23] doing all of the algorithmic work. You get to
[10:26] pick a little bit more about what you see. I
[10:28] think there is something, so Threads just launched
[10:30] something called Your Algo today. And basically
[10:33] it lets you privately tell Threads to show you
[10:36] more or less of a specific topic. In the way
[10:39] that they're doing it, it's like, hey, show me.
[10:40] more of this topic for three or you know three
[10:43] or seven days at a time that is so weird to me
[10:45] like hey I want to see more about like cars for
[10:47] the next three days or I want to see more about
[10:49] you know slacklining for the next seven days
[10:52] like that's so weird if you're interested in
[10:53] a topic I probably just toggle it on in the settings
[10:56] like hey I'm interested in like these 10 different
[10:58] things it's like the basic onboarding you expected
[11:00] from every you know web service over the last
[11:02] 10 years that asks you like what you were interested
[11:04] in and then of course TikTok just kind of guessed
[11:06] it and figured it all out but It's interesting
[11:08] that they're only letting you pick that for a
[11:10] few days. I'm sure whatever you interact with
[11:12] is just going to get permanently baked into the
[11:13] algorithm. You'll probably keep seeing some of
[11:15] that stuff. But it's interesting they're only
[11:18] letting you tune it for that amount of time.
[11:19] There was a different thing that came out with
[11:21] Instagram earlier this month called Your Algorithm.
[11:25] And that works for feed, explore, reels. And
[11:29] this happened at the same time. I think they're
[11:30] kind of basically trying to compete with TikTok,
[11:32] who has a tool called Manage Topics. I think
[11:35] that's like two years old. TikTok's been doing
[11:36] this for a long time. But TikTok is pretty interesting
[11:39] the way it actually works. They'll let you pick
[11:41] a whole bunch of different keywords that you're
[11:44] interested. You could say, you know, I'm interested
[11:47] in like sports, travel, humor, current affair,
[11:49] dance, food, like, you know, all of these different
[11:52] topics. And it's going to show you more of those.
[11:54] Now, I think this kind of stems from maybe some
[11:56] criticism that TikTok got over the last couple
[11:59] of years. I don't know how accurate or true it
[12:01] was, but I've heard for many years that if you
[12:02] go to watch TikTok in China, it's going to be,
[12:04] you know, all these videos about people. learning
[12:06] different STEM science, academic things. And
[12:10] then if you watch TikTok in America, it's just,
[12:12] you know, degenerate gas station brawls. And,
[12:15] you know, that's like China trying to use the
[12:17] algorithm to destroy the American mind. Now,
[12:18] I don't know how much truth is in all that. We
[12:20] kind of have the, you know, TikTok has been divested
[12:23] from China to some degree. I don't really know
[12:25] exactly how much separation has happened with
[12:28] all of that, you know, although that's been going
[12:29] on for years as well. What I will say is, regardless
[12:32] of the truth to all of that, there was definitely
[12:34] a lot of bad PR. and people were talking about
[12:38] that. And so I think they are like, look, hey,
[12:40] if you're worried that you think we're trying
[12:42] to destroy your brain with the algorithm and
[12:45] give you TikTok rot brain, look, we'll let you
[12:47] pick your algorithm. Now, is it gonna destroy
[12:49] your attention span to watch 15 to 60 second
[12:51] clips on repeat all day long? Probably, but now
[12:54] at least you get to pick how your attention span
[12:56] is destroyed. Just kidding, but I think this
[12:59] is a good move in the right direction, allowing
[13:01] people to pick what they want to see. Okay, the
[13:03] last story I want to cover today I think is fascinating
[13:05] because this is a company that has taken a completely
[13:07] different approach than basically all of the
[13:09] other social media platforms we've talked about
[13:10] here, and that is Pinterest. Pinterest has been
[13:12] very famous in saying like, hey, look, we're
[13:14] trying to not really outright ban AI -generated
[13:17] content on our platform, but basically they're
[13:18] trying to demote it. They're trying to tag it.
[13:20] They're trying to flag it. They really don't
[13:22] want you to see a lot of AI. generated stuff.
[13:24] And they've been pretty clear about that. Something
[13:25] that's interesting about Pinterest is a pin has
[13:27] a very long life, a life expectancy, whatever
[13:31] you want to call it, right? If you post something
[13:32] on TikTok, you can expect that thing to be popular
[13:34] for like a week, maybe max three days, probably
[13:37] two days. And after two days, you basically run
[13:39] the course of how many people are going to see
[13:41] that organically in their algorithm. Pinterest,
[13:43] on the other hand, you can get something, you
[13:45] know, five years later, someone might still be
[13:46] looking up your your mushroom soup recipe or
[13:49] whatever and looking and repinning that. And
[13:51] that's actually a platform I've played around
[13:53] a lot with my first startup self pause, which
[13:55] by the way, my wife just rebuilt and relaunched
[13:58] completely redesigned with new features. She
[14:00] vibe coded on Claude right before she had her
[14:02] baby a week ago. So if you're interested in checking
[14:05] out self pause, subtle plug to that it's got
[14:08] an AI life coach. It's a AI. Well, it's really
[14:10] just a meditation app with real voices and real
[14:13] meditations. But we did add an AI life coach
[14:15] on there. That's kind of cool. You can also record
[14:17] your own voice. But in any case, something that
[14:20] was interesting, I've done a lot with Pinterest
[14:22] is I actually used Pinterest to promote that
[14:24] the self pause that app when I first when I first
[14:28] started launching that company, maybe like seven
[14:30] years ago. And I very quickly was able to get
[14:34] to about a million monthly views on my pins that
[14:38] I was posting for that app. So Pinterest has
[14:41] a massive potential to really grow and push things
[14:44] if it's if you got the right audience on there.
[14:45] And if you're if you're interacting with it correctly.
[14:48] But all of that was, you know, not AI generated
[14:50] content. And when all the AI generated content
[14:52] came around that, you know, the name of the game
[14:54] with Pinterest, the way I was able to get a million
[14:55] impressions back then was I was pinning. I mean,
[14:59] I was using like Canva and I think I had virtual
[15:01] assistants that were making like pins for me.
[15:02] My strategy in particular was I would just kind
[15:04] of make a nice background and I'd have like a
[15:06] positive affirmation quote on that background.
[15:09] And then I had all of these different boards
[15:10] that were categorized and I would have, you know,
[15:14] like I think like 20 to 50 pins going out every
[15:17] single day. virtual assistants that were making
[15:19] them, we had, you know, big databases of positive
[15:21] affirmations that we had writers writing. So
[15:23] that was it was easy to just copy and paste that
[15:25] onto like a nice background. And I had virtual
[15:27] assistants that could pump out a ton of them.
[15:28] But it was all about the numbers. That's how
[15:30] we are really growing on Pinterest was how many
[15:32] things we were posting. So today, when AI can
[15:35] virtually do an unlimited amount of that content,
[15:37] for even cheaper, even faster, they really wanted
[15:40] to cut back and try to give people just, you
[15:42] know, organic human made content. And so it's
[15:46] Pretty interesting to me that they have now launched
[15:48] a new standalone AI shopping app, which is, by
[15:51] the way, is all based off of Pinterest's taste
[15:53] graph. So they have like all their database,
[15:54] all their data is used for this, but they didn't
[15:57] want to put all of these AI features into the
[15:59] Pinterest app. So they made their very own standalone
[16:02] app for this. And it is basically a conversational
[16:06] AI shopping app. So you can chat with it about
[16:08] what you want to get. And it can bring up information
[16:10] and different products. And it's all based off
[16:12] of everything that's already on Pinterest. It's
[16:15] limited access right now. But even Pinterest,
[16:17] who completely swore off AI, is testing the waters
[16:19] with AI. I'm excited to see where this goes because
[16:22] I see so much potential with generative AI and
[16:24] shopping. Pinterest has such a huge opportunity
[16:26] with shopping. You see what Amazon's doing with
[16:28] AI and shopping. I think Pinterest sees that.
[16:30] They don't want to miss out, but they don't want
[16:31] to feel like they're maybe selling out to AI.
[16:33] So this should be interesting. They are rolling
[16:35] out AI in a bunch of other ways. They have a
[16:37] new MCP that people that are advertisers can
[16:39] use to help interact with their advertising platform.
[16:42] They also have a new performance plus creative
[16:44] AI model that went live globally to basically
[16:46] select the best performing ad creative. So when
[16:49] it comes to ads, they're using AI and algorithms
[16:51] and MCPs, but for the users, they're kind of
[16:53] trying to push away from that branding until
[16:55] this brand new standalone app. So I'm curious
[16:57] to see how this will perform. Thank you everyone
[17:00] so much for tuning into the podcast today. If
[17:01] you enjoyed the episode, make sure to leave a
[17:03] rating and review wherever you get your podcasts.
[17:05] And as always, make sure to go check out the
[17:07] brand new AI Box MCP if you want to get access
[17:10] to images and audio creation inside of Cloud
[17:13] and ChatGPT and, you know, be able to pick through
[17:16] 80 different AI models. You're able to also build
[17:18] tools on AI Box and call them from inside of
[17:20] Cloud. So if you have a workflow where you're,
[17:22] you know, generating... creating different thumbnails
[17:24] or different assets. You can create a tool over
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[17:39] in the description to AI box .ai slash MCP. All
[17:43] right. Catch you guys all in the next episode.

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