The Reddy Rundown — Systems Over Hype, Every Time

Here’s a new episode of The Reddy Rundown, crafted so you don’t have to frantically follow everything in the AI news space wondering what you’re missing as an exec in 2025 trying to keep up.

I'm Shawn Reddy — CEO of AI Advantage Agency. But before that, I was the marketing architect. And in this era, I still think like one.

Because when AI news hits, I don’t just ask what the model can do — I ask: How does this change the system brands use to grow?

This week, we’re looking at a record-setting valuation, a billion-dollar acqui-hire, a surprisingly useful image tool from Google (with the worst internal codename), and a 3D world-builder that might just flip the creative workflow.

Let’s get into it.

Anthropic Valued at $183B: Signal or Bubble?

What happened: Anthropic just raised a massive $13B round, giving it a new valuation of $183B — triple what it was just six months ago. Claude Code is now a $500M/year product, and they’ve got over 300,000 enterprise customers. New to the cap table? QIA, the Qatar Investment Authority — a notable pivot from Anthropic’s earlier hesitation to take Gulf funding.

My take: Forget model benchmarks for a second. The real takeaway is this: Enterprise adoption is scaling fast, and Claude is no longer the “other” model — it’s the one your compliance team prefers. For marketers, that means more integrations, more automation tooling, and possibly a safer LLM to bake into outbound systems.

Anthropic isn’t chasing creators or casual users — they’re building a backend brain for enterprise workflows. If you’re building sales or marketing agents, this valuation confirms it: Claude is the model you’ll need to reckon with — or build on.

OpenAI Acquires Statsig for $1.1B: Growth Team Goes In-House

What happened: OpenAI bought Statsig — the experimentation platform used for A/B testing, feature flagging, and growth analytics — in a $1.1B all-stock deal. Their CEO, Vijaye Raji, is now CTO of Applications, running product engineering across ChatGPT and Codex.

Why it matters for marketers: Statsig isn’t a household name, but it’s a serious backend for iterative growth. This move tells us something big: OpenAI is gearing up to become a product company, not just a model lab. For marketing teams, that means faster product cycles, tighter feedback loops, and tools that won’t just generate content — they’ll optimize it. Automatically.

This also signals a future where your email variant, CTA button, and product headline may all be AI-optimized by default — if you’ve got your experimentation systems in place.

Create Product Ads with “Nano Banana”: Shockingly Useful

What happened: Google quietly dropped a tool (buried under the worst internal codename: Nano Banana) that lets you turn basic product photos into ads in different environments — subway, magazine, billboard, etc. — for 4 cents an image.

The marketing use case: Let’s be honest — most AI image tools are either mid or wildly impractical. But this one? Actually useful. Think campaign mockups at scale. Drop in your product shot, pick 5 ad settings, and now your brand strategist has directional creative without touching Photoshop.

Workflow I’m testing:

• Sales teams upload client product photos

• Nano Banana generates contextual ad mocks (billboard, desktop, IG story)

• Used in proposal decks to pre-visualize campaigns → higher close rates

Tencent’s Voyager: World Models Meet Brand Worlds

What happened: Tencent launched Voyager, a world model that builds full 3D environments from a single photo. It can remember scenes as you explore them — kind of like a video game engine built by AI.

Why marketers should care: This isn’t about metaverse hype. This is about brand environments. Interactive product demos. Virtual test drives. AI-built booths.

If your brand relies on experiential marketing or physical environments, tools like Voyager signal what comes next: programmable, explorable brand spaces — with no dev team required.

Tools I'm Testing (and How I'd Use Them in a Funnel)

Here’s what’s new in my stack — not just the tool, but how a marketing system could use it:

Claude Code Natural-language code assistant by Anthropic - Automate custom dashboard queries, outbound logic tweaks, or landing page variations without engineering bottlenecks

Nano Banana Visual ad creator from product images - Pre-visualize campaigns for clients, generate assets for pitch decks or moodboards

Statsig A/B testing + growth analytics (now part of OpenAI) - Plug into outbound or email testing to validate copy hooks, CTA timing, or offer layouts

Hostinger n8n VPS Affordable self-hosting for n8n workflows - Use for GDPR-compliant automation + deploy AI agents without relying on cloud pay-per-run billing

Tencent Voyager AI-generated 3D brand spaces - Build interactive demos for products or onboarding without Unreal/Unity overhead

Final Thought: Your Moat is the System

Every headline this week pointed to one thing: The best-funded companies aren’t just building better AI. They’re building better systems.

Whether it’s OpenAI turning growth engineering into a product team, or Anthropic stacking enterprise revenue from behind-the-scenes tooling — the system is the story. And for modern marketers, your stack is no longer optional.

My move? Keep testing, keep wiring, and keep documenting what works.

Looking for a community of like-minded individuals who are interested in AI and Entrepreneurship? Join our free community here to get started: The AI Advantage Community Thank you for reading! -Shawn