Musical accompaniment for today’s newsletter. When I was a young HR communications consultant, I had a client, a young HR manager at an energy company and an Air Force reservist, who, right after 9/11, basically vanished overnight when he went on active duty. Two years later, he reappeared. I took him to lunch soon after his return to catch up. In the course of conversation, he says, “Oh, yeah, I’m not a smoker, but I smoked about a pack a day overseas.” Boredom and access to free cigarettes will do that.
I bring this up to make a point: some occupations lend themselves to nicotine use. I spent the first 10 years of my career in newspapers, back when you could still smoke in the office. There was a cigarette machine in the break room. Journalism was very much a smoking occupation once upon a time. Unlike my former client, who put down his habit after he got home, I spent part of my adult life very much a smoker. When you work with smokers, it’s pretty easy to do. It’s stress relief. It’s a camaraderie builder. As a bonus, it has easily shaved maybe five-ish years off my life.
Now, you may be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with Work Tech?” Well, I give you the tech industry’s latest office perk: nicotine-pouch fridges and vending machines.
Yup, the 996 Squad just reinvented the smoke break and called it “performance optimization.”
I know we aren’t even two weeks into this dumpster fire of a year, but this is sooooo 2026 Silicon Valley behavior. It’s got everything:
- Biohacking cosplay. Nicotine pouches framed as “focus tools” are just Adderall discourse with better branding and mango flavoring. Same impulse, cleaner aesthetic, even sketchier logic.
- Adios, cold brew! Hola, cold sweats! We spent a decade normalizing caffeine as culture. Now we’re shocked that the arms race escalated to a known addictive stimulant being handed out like LaCroix.
- Productivity theater. If your AI startup needs nicotine vending machines to ship faster, the problem might not be neurotransmitters. It might be roadmaps, management, or the fact that everyone’s cooked.
- The Palantir connection. Of course there’s a Peter Thiel tie-in. A company that thrives on contrarianism and edge-seeking is basically the perfect Petri dish for “what if addiction, but … make it rationalist?”
- The real irony: Founders preaching longevity while juicing short-term output with something doctors still call “highly addictive.” What’s next? Doing a few lines at the break room Kombucha bar?
I don’t want to come off too tut-tut about this. If I’m working at a startup, and they swapped out Zyn and Sesh for, let’s say, Padron Serie 1926 Maduros, I’d be elbowing people out of the way like Gordie Howe in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. And that’s my point. Nicotine addiction has a long tail. Gen Z may not drink as much, but they are trading their vapes for cigarettes. What could go wrong?
What else is going on this week?
Artisan AI Goes Dark On LinkedIn
In case you didn’t know already, LinkedIn is having a moment. Another brand having a moment is Artisan AI. If you were trying to find Artisan AI on LinkedIn recently, you didn’t. The company’s LinkedIn page, individual employee profiles, and posts from executives all displayed a “This post cannot be displayed” message. What happened?
The startup had been banned from the site, Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack told TechCrunch. What happened? Artisan flew too close to the LinkedIn sun — name-dropping the platform, leaning on sketchy data pipes — and got vaporized. Briefly. Publicly. Spectacularly.
The irony? The ban juiced their pipeline. I guess nothing markets in SF like The Man keeping you down.
2026 Work Tech Crystal Ball
If I were an online bloviator worth my salt, I would have barfed up some industry predictions before the old year ended. Didn’t happen. Prediction posts are kind of BS anyway, even if they are an easy mail-it-in post at year’s end and truly the lowest form of intellectual discourse. That being the case, you’d think that I’d be all over it, but I’m too lazy to do even that.
So, instead, I give you an even lower form of discourse: Riffing off of things other people said. What can Work Tech look forward to this year?
1. Work Tech IPO talk sizzles: As a signal of our frothy economic moment, there was no shortage of spit-balling about potential tech IPOs and breathless excitement about the outlook for 2026. Work Tech candidates include: Canva, Ramp, Rippling, Gusto, Deel, and Notion. My prediction: None of them will go public. Why jump through the hoops when you can accomplish the same outcome in the secondary market without the regulatory oversight?
2. Private equity losing its luster: You may shed no tears to learn that the PE industry is struggling to unload 31,000 investments. Here’s why you should care: Work Tech has increasingly become a PE-dominated industry, not a VC-dominated one as it was before 2022. My prediction: PE will struggle bigly this year, and Work Tech companies’ growth and hiring will struggle along with it.
3. More money, just not for you: The chattering classes of digital media tell us that top VCs expect more venture dollars, bigger rounds, and fewer winners this year. Why? The AI big boys are sucking up all the investment. A few people and companies will do very well. Strategics will kick up M&A activity as well. They have the money to make buys on favorable terms. Some opportunistic buying. Some tuck-in acquisitions. Some roll-ups. Plus a lot of good, old-fashioned acqui-hires. My prediction: Category contraction continues, more startups flame out, and jobs will be hard to come by.
Funding and Acquisitions
- Anthropic plans to raise $10 billion at a valuation of $350 billion, nearly doubling its value from four months ago. A $350 billion valuation four months later isn’t about Anthropic’s revenue — it’s about investors panic-buying a seat at the “AI infrastructure” table before the music stops. This isn’t a bubble popping yet, but it’s definitely the sound of capital sprinting faster than fundamentals. (Wall Street Journal)
- Vibe-coding startup Lovable raises $330 million at a $6.6 billion valuation. The Stockholm-based vibe-coding platform tripled its value in five months. AI-first dev tooling has come a long way in a blink, but now questions are surfacing about model reliability, security, and actual production readiness as these systems scale beyond prototyping. (TechCrunch)
- Online learning platforms Coursera, Udemy to merge in a deal valued as $2.5 billion. The all-stock merger combines two of the biggest online learning platforms into a single powerhouse. This isn’t an ed-tech power move so much as a defensive cuddle; scale as a survival strategy in a world where AI tutors, employers, and YouTube are all eating the lunch. Bigger catalog, same existential question: will credentials matter more than outcomes, or is this just Spotify for skills with better branding? (TechCrunch)
- PolyAI raises $86 million Series D. Voice AI isn’t new, but enterprise-grade voice that’s reliable, natural, and safe at scale? That’s still in the early innings. PolyAI’s latest raise signals investor belief in voice automation as core infrastructure — not a gimmick feature — especially for sectors where live interactions still drive retention and revenue. (FinSMEs)
- Truemed raises $34 million Series A. This is a “prehab over rehab” approach that uses health spend to target wellness before illness hits. It’s less sexy than AI but maybe more impactful: giving its members financial agency to use existing tax-advantaged accounts on real-world, everyday products and services that align with evidence-based preventive care. (FinSMEs)
- Ben raises $27.5 million Series B. This AI-first employee benefits management platform, designed for global enterprises, consolidates complex benefit stacks across providers, countries, and broker networks into a single system that automates admin, surfaces real-time cost and utilization data, and gives employees personalized guidance. (FinSMEs)
- DailyPay has closed a new $195 million senior secured revolving credit facility. DailyPay is positioning itself to compete more aggressively with companies like Even, PayActiv, and integrated payroll platforms. It also shows that investors/lenders still want in on WorkTech/FinTech plays even amid macro tightening. (Press Release)
Coming Next Week: The Work Tech Weekly Podcast
When you imagined what 2026 would bring, I’m sure you said to yourself, “I really hope another #%$& marketer creates another podcast that I can not listen to while I’m on the treadmill.” Well, dreams do come true. Starting next week, you’ll be able to listen on your podcast platform of choice — Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. So, get ready and mash that subscribe button. In the meantime, watch the trailer above to set your expectations appropriately.
Industry Notes
- Anthropic adds Allianz to growing list of enterprise wins. (TechCrunch)
- 15 Enterprise tech trends to watch: An excellent overview from Larry Dignan at Constellation Research. (LinkedIn)
- The corporate playbook for next year? Don’t hire. (Wall Street Journal)
- What happened to Happy Hour? Expensify says that bar tabs globally are almost back to 2019 levels. (Wall Street Journal)
- LinkedIn’s war against bot scrapers ramps up as AI gets smarter. (Bloomberg Law News)
- Laszlo Bock joins Anthropic as Senior Advisor at Anthropic. (LinkedIn)
- John Schneider joins UKG as VP of Platform and Portfolio Marketing. (LinkedIn)
- Betterworks announces Allie Collins’ promotion to Chief Marketing Officer. (LinkedIn)
- Anaplan appoints Bill Guilmart as Senior Vice President of AI, Product and Solutions Marketing. (Press Release)
- McKinsey executives plot job cuts in slowdown for consulting industry. (Bloomberg)
Worth Reading
- Joe Ely’s final act: Saying goodbye to a Texas music legend. (Texas Monthly)
- Lance Haun on the elephant in the HR industry room — SHRM. (LinkedIn)
- Tom Brady is not The GOAT; Jim Thorpe is. Chuck Klosterman makes the argument. (The New York Times)
- How to decode generational slang to boost leadership communication. (Forbes)
