Field notes
This is where all the infrastructure earns its keep — the apps that turned matrix math into the fastest-adopted products in history. Notice how few years separate 'research preview' from 'hundreds of millions of weekly users' in these records.
Start with these three
CH
ChatGPT
The product the entire build-out is downstream of.
CC
Claude Code
Agentic coding grown up — software that writes software, in your terminal.
WD
Waymo Driver
Embodied AI's proof: fully driverless, at commercial scale, right now.
Assistants & consumer AI
7
CH
ChatGPT
The fastest-adopted software product in history — and AI's front door.
CL
Claude
Anthropic's assistant — the professional's and programmer's choice.
G(
Gemini (app)
Google's assistant, fused into Search, Android and Workspace.
G(
Grok (on X)
The assistant living inside a social network.
MA
Meta AI
The assistant embedded in WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.
MC
Microsoft Copilot
AI threaded through Windows, Office and the enterprise stack.
P(
Perplexity (answer engine)
Cited answers instead of links — search rebuilt around models.
Coding & developer tools
7
CU
Cursor
The AI-native editor that became a phenomenon.
CC
Claude Code
The terminal-native coding agent — Anthropic's breakout developer product.
DE
Devin
The 'AI software engineer' that started the autonomous-agent race.
GC
GitHub Copilot
The original AI pair programmer — first product of the LLM era at scale.
LO
Lovable
Europe's fastest startup ever by revenue ramp — apps from prompts.
OC
OpenAI Codex
OpenAI's software-engineering agent, from cloud sandbox to CLI.
RE
Replit
Natural-language app building for non-programmers.
Creative tools
4
E(
ElevenLabs (platform)
Voices as a service: dubbing, audiobooks, agents that speak.
M(
Midjourney (service)
The subscription image studio with the signature look.
NO
NotebookLM
Your documents, turned into podcasts and grounded answers.
S(
Suno (app)
Complete songs from a sentence — music's ChatGPT moment.
Enterprise, science & robotics
6
WD
Waymo Driver
The autonomous driver with hundreds of thousands of paid rides a week.
F0
Figure 03
The home-oriented humanoid, built for Helix.
GL
Glean
Enterprise search that became the company brain.
HA
Harvey
The elite law firms' AI associate.
SI
Sierra
Bret Taylor's customer-service agents — outcomes-priced AI labor.
TF
Tesla FSD (Supervised)
Vision-only autonomy shipped to millions of consumer cars.