Google Sheets gets more Gemini powers, Deepseek drama and Meta's new AI developer
Plus: Block AI's productivity Goose, a new tool to test your AI agent, how to make better decisions
Hi product people, welcome to the 200+ new subscribers who joined us since last week!
This week, we take a look at a new engineering tool from payments company Block which promises to boost engineering times thanks to AI agents that can integrate with internal tools.
Plus, a product-led perspective on the Deepseek drama along with some other Chinese AI companies worth knowing about if you’re feeling a little Deepseek fatigued, a new tool to help you to test your AI products before they ship and some new Gemini-powered features for Google Sheets.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
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Key reads and resources for product teams
New from the Department of Product Substack this week:
The Knowledge Series - OpenAI Operator Explored
“OpenAI's Operator is a technological breakthrough that makes processes like ordering groceries incredibly easy.” At least that’s what Instacart’s Chief Product Officer Daniel Danker said on the launch of OpenAI’s latest product. In this Knowledge Series, we go deep into what OpenAI Operator is, how it works, the technologies that underpin the new release, and explore some use cases together. We’ll take a look at how the initial batch of official companies who are working with OpenAI are using Operator along with some use cases you might want to try for yourself.
More from the Substack you may have missed:
(Department of Product)
UX - The Proximity Principle explained
When related fields are grouped together, it makes forms easier to read and less intimidating for users. This clear organization helps users quickly find what they need and improves their overall experience. (UX Planet)
Process - How top product teams build and maintain design system documentation
Design system documentation needs to do more than just catalog components - it must capture the reasoning behind design decisions and serve as a bridge between different teams. Effective documentation should be tailored to different audiences with designers needing visual examples and usage patterns, developers requiring technical specifications and API documentation, and product managers needing high-level overviews and roadmaps. This guide from Figma’s Carly Ayres explores how top design teams from GitHub, eBay and more create their design system documentation. (Figma blog)
Strategy - Why did DoorDash win?
Strategy turns on a few big decisions. For DoorDash, three of them really mattered. (Dan Hock)
Podcast - How to make better decisions under pressure
According to Carol Kauffman, leaders can make better decisions under pressure by using the MOVE framework: being Mindfully alert, generating Options, Validating their vantage point, and Engaging to effect change. (Harvard Business Review)
New product features and innovation this week
Block’s CEO Jack Dorsey has released a new tool called Goose which is designed to help engineers speed up productivity by using AI agents to automate tasks. It lets users choose their own LLM provider and uses what it calls “Extensions”. These allow users to connect agents to tools like Google Drive, GitHub and other products. Right now, Goose is focussed on helping engineering teams get more work done so if your company is looking for ways to boost engineering productivity, this could be worth checking out. Block says non-engineering use cases are also in the exploration phase. Watch in action here.
Google Sheets can now do more complex data analysis, thanks to Gemini. Up until now, the Gemini integration has been pretty underwhelming but Google has gradually started to roll out more improvements. This week, it has added the ability to generate insights from data in Gemini and to transform those insights into visual graphs. Graphs can be added directly to Google Sheets - but only as images.
Meanwhile…
Since the release of Sonar, Perplexity has kept its reputation as a company that ships with two additional new products: one is an Assistant baked directly into Android and the other is Sonar Reasoning - another new API, but this time powered by DeepSeek’s reasoning models. Perplexity is making a point to explain that the API is US-hosted with no training on customer data.
Meta AI is launching the ability for its chatbot to “remember” certain details about you, such as your dietary preferences or interests. Memories will be limited to one-on-one chats (not group chats) and Meta says that it is on track to become the most used AI assistant.
Generative AI startup Pika has launched a new version 2.1. The updated generative AI video product now includes support for full HD output and introduces a new concept called “Ingredients” where users can upload their own personal images and incorporate these into videos.
In other news…
Leaked code suggests Uber is working on a price-lock feature that would allow users to purchase a monthly pass for $2.99 and avoid any surge pricing.
Anthropic has launched a new Citations API that ensures Claude models provide references for its output. Anthropic says that Thomson Reuters used it to power their AI product, CoCounsel, which helps legal and tax professionals synthesize expert knowledge.
Deepseek fatigued?
Here’s some other Chinese AI companies worth knowing about:
Tools you can use
Basedash - generate beautiful dashboards from over 550 sources without writing a single line of SQL.
TabBoo - boost your productivity by adding jumpscares to websites you’re addicted to but want to avoid.
Coval - a new startup that conducts safety tests on your AI agent / chatbot. Ideal for pre-launch scenario testing.
📈 Product data and trends to stay informed
Deepseek caused chaos on the US financial markets this week. Here’s part of the reason why: it costs just $2.19 to generate 1 million output API tokens via Deepseek’s R1 AI model vs $60 for OpenAI’s o1 model. Both models achieve similar results across reasoning benchmarks which raises fundamental questions about the true ‘value’ of the models themselves. Deepseek is now the most downloaded app in the US iPhone App Store but is this just hype?
As models become commodities, the differences between them could become negligible. In which case, it’s then about the products that are built on top of those models - rather than the models themselves. However, API revenues are currently a core part of OpenAI’s revenue strategy; if cheaper models can achieve the same results on a smaller budget, API revenues quickly evaporate. The real winner here is the product teams building products on top of the cheaper models.
Deposits on Coinbase grew 197% YoY in November. The number of new users increased over 700% in November and over 475% in December. New users deposited $345 on average.
One of Stripe’s product managers says that over 90+ countries have now paid using stablecoins through Stripe.
AI will cut product development lifecycles in half, according to a new report. AI in R&D can reduce time to market by 50% and lower costs by 30%. 73% of executives say they’ll use generative AI to make changes to their company’s business model. PWC 2025 AI report in full.
Spotify says it paid $10 billion to the music industry last year. For context, in 2014, the total global recorded music revenues were just $13 billion.
More than $1.4 billion was spent on AI apps in 2024 and spending is set to grow to more than $2 billion in 2025. 64% of this spend is from the US and ChatGPT accounts for 44% of global spending on AI apps. 85% of ChatGPT users are male. Full Appfigures report.
Other product news in brief
🥽Meta’s Reality Labs recorded its highest ever revenue for the quarter with $1.083 billion
🐳Microsoft is probing whether Deepseek improperly used OpenAI models. Italy has banned it.
🚁Amazon is starting its drone deliveries in the UK
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