Google's Gemini Maps + $20B Army AI Deal

Google Maps adds Gemini-powered conversational search and photo-realistic 3D navigation.

US Army awards Androl a 10-year contract worth up to $20 billion.

And Microsoft launches co-pilot health to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic in consumer

medical AI.

Welcome to today's Pivot 5.

I'm Robin.

And I'm Sean.

Let's dig in.

Google just dropped what they're calling their biggest maps update in a decade.

It's called Ask Maps, powered by Gemini.

And it lets you ask conversational questions like, my phone is dying.

Where can I charge it without waiting for coffee?

The system pulls from your saved places and search history to personalize answers.

So if you've searched for vegan spots before, it'll surface those without you asking.

That's actually pretty wild.

I mean, it's not just search anymore.

It's like maps is reading your mind a bit.

But they're also rolling out immersive navigation, right?

The 3D thing.

Yeah, exactly.

It replaces the flat map with photo-realistic 3D rendering of buildings, overpasses, terrain,

lane markings, all of it.

Voice guidance now uses landmarks instead of distances.

Like go past this exit and take the next one.

It's basically catching up to what Apple Maps has had for years.

Interesting.

So Google's playing defense here, especially with AI native tools like perplexity eating

into local search.

If this works, it keeps maps as the dominant interface for spatial queries, which is huge

for their ad revenue.

The US Army just signed a 10-year contract with Andrewl worth up to $20 billion.

That's Palmer Leckie's defense tech startup, the guy who sold Oculus to Facebook and

then got fired over political donations.

This deal consolidates over 100 separate procurement actions into one enterprise agreement covering

hardware, software, infrastructure, the whole stack.

20 billion.

That's insane.

And Andrewl pulled in two billion in revenue last year, building autonomous drones,

fighter jets, submarines.

They're reportedly raising at a 60 billion valuation now.

I think this is the Army betting hard on software-driven warfare over traditional contractor.

Right.

And it's happening while the Pentagon is feuding with Anthropic over a failed contract and

open AI faced backlash for signing a defense deal.

So Andrewl's timing here is pretty strategic.

The modern battlefield is increasingly defined by software, according to the DOD's CTO.

Yeah, that tracks.

If you're the Army and you want to move fast, you go with a company that's already building

the autonomous systems you need.

Not the legacy players still figuring out AI.

Microsoft just launched co-pilot health, and this is their first real play in consumer

medical AI.

It pulls together data from wearables, electronic health records, lab results, then uses AI to

create what they're calling a coherent story of your health.

Waitlist opened March 12th, rolling out first to English-speaking adults in the US.

So, they're going head-to-head with open AI's chat GPT health and Anthropics clawed

for healthcare, which both launch in January.

This is basically a race to own the interface between people and their medical data.

Exactly.

I think Microsoft might have an edge here because of their existing enterprise healthcare

relationships.

They could leverage those for distribution in ways open AI and Anthropic can't.

But the big question is trust.

Who do you actually want aggregating your health data?

Yeah, an accuracy matters a ton.

If any of these systems get something wrong about someone's health, that's a massive

liability.

The competitive dynamics will come down to trust, integration depth, and who can actually

prove their AI is reliable in the clinical context.

Nine, a startup founded by a father-son duo, just raised $5.3 million to solve a problem

most people don't think about.

AI agents can't actually tell if you're linked in profile, your Instagram account, and your

public records all belong to the same person.

Nine uses millions of web-crawling agents and machine learning to connect those dots across

platforms like Facebook, X, SoundCloud, Strava, all of it.

Wait, doesn't Google already do this with ad targeting?

Like they know who you are everywhere.

They do, but Google has exclusive access to search history and cross-platform login data,

and they'll never share that with third-party agents.

For everyone else, this is actually a really hard problem.

Nine's pitch is that as companies deploy autonomous agents for purchasing an outreach, they'll

need cross-platform identity data to understand customers.

Okay, so the market here is massive.

Many companies using AI agents to reach customers needs this.

But I'm not so sure about the privacy angle.

Like how do people feel about a startup crawling their entire digital footprint?

Yeah, that's the question.

Wish-off ventures led the round, and their founder literally said, how do I know you're pregnant

and sell you A, B, or C as early as possible?

So the use case is clear, but the ethics are murky.

Nash Robotics launched the Nash 1, a $1,500 robot that autonomously cooks meals.

You load ingredients, pick from over 500 recipes or create custom ones using natural language,

and the robot handles everything.

It stirs, monitors with AI cameras, and sends you an app notification when dinner's ready.

Okay, but there's already a competitor called Pasha at the exact same price with almost

the same design.

What's the difference?

When Nash 1 has a fully sealed cooking chamber, Pasha's pot is open, so splashes and fumes

escape.

Nash's design keeps everything contained.

Pre-orders are live on Kickstarter, shipping the summer.

The fact that two companies are launching nearly identical products at 1,500 bucks suggests

the category is standardizing around that price point.

Yeah, but neither has proven market demand at scale yet.

I think the real question is whether people actually want a robot cooking for them, or

if this is just a cool gadget that sits in the garage after six months.

That's today's Pivot 5.

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Thanks for listening.