Love a good troll {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Samsung put up entire billboards to mock Apple for only starting to do foldable iPhones now. Apparently, they knew exactly when Apple was launching the Duo, because they supply some of the tech inside it. 🤭

In This Open Letter

Plus a whole host of new Meta gadgets and goodies on the horizon…

About a year after we poked fun at Zuck losing $73 to $80 billion (around R1.3 trillion) on metaverse and hardware before canning it, Meta hit back with some serious new launches at Meta Connect recently.

Including a bit of news most SA outlets missed: In a footnote on its own blog, Meta announced last week that South Africa is one of 11 countries where it will launch Oakley Meta, Ray-Ban Meta and Ray-Ban Meta Optics in 2027. Jip, no more grey imports for us.

We don't know the stockists, whether all features will be available or how SA and POPIA are going to survive the "pervert" glasses craze, but they're coming, along with a host of other Meta gadgets and goodies — here's what you should know about…

The big one: Meta Muse AI

All the buzz right now is Muse, Meta's way-more-cutesy version of OpenClaw that sends emails, books travel, fills in forms, buys stuff and, as we've shown earlier this week, gives away your home address to strangers on Facebook Marketplace.

Before you laugh, though, it's a serious contender on adoption alone: it hit 730,000 downloads in five days (more than ChatGPT or Claude) and is backed by a host of shopping partners and is already making inroads into small businesses with Shopify, Stripe, QuickBooks, Canva and Slack integrations.

Silly wearable notwithstanding, Muse will make its way to SA soon, and it's defs on all the new Meta glasses. Plus: the AI was enough to scare Bezos into banning its access to Amazon entirely, so keep an eye on this one.

And, obviously (it’s Meta after all), some warnings

There are no brakes for Zuck on AI: While Altman (OpenAI) and Dario Amodei (Anthropic) joined Elon Musk in calling for a slowdown on AI development before the UN, Zuckerberg just said "nah" — and this is the guy whose leaked internal docs showed they were working on facial recognition for their glasses earlier this year.

Plus, don't forget that some poor peeps in Kenya are contracted to review Meta's glasses' footage, and they say they routinely see some "intimate" stuff on there.

And for those who aren't fans of the idea of people with glasses potentially recording them, there's now an app for detecting when smart glasses are recording nearby called ZuckOff.

We're watching this space…

Have your say…

Speaking of the new Muse AI, Meta's own staff fears that sending random strangers to your door is just the beginning: one employee said it routed around its guardrails and exposed someone's private iCloud photos after being asked to identify toys in a birthday photo.

Another, testing it to track fast-selling tickets, called it unreliable, full of failure modes. So, even with a near-unlimited budget and some of the best engineers on Earth, it still shipped like this…

Why? Agents are improving fast, but AI projects still fail at double the rate of normal IT projects. Gartner's even got a name for it: "agent washing" — just slap "agentic" on a chatbot and hope nobody checks under the hood.

Here's the local problem: SA's AI adoption is the highest in Africa, but we only see American numbers in studies — no one knows what actually happens once AI picks up a task in a South African business.

So DayOne is finding out: they just opened the State of AI Delivery in South Africa survey, where they look to find out what's in production, what's stuck in pilot and what's actually working.

It takes about 15 minutes, and you're invited to share your experience with AI, right now.

Your team is pulling in one direction, your stakeholders in another, and honestly, everyone's got a solid reason for what they want. So OfferZen asked Lena Reinhard, engineering leader and coach, how to separate empathy from trying to keep everyone happy.

In this free, on-demand video that you can download from OfferZen, she shows you how to make the tough calls.

📈 No Grants, Just Prep. The JSE and TIA have launched a 16-week pilot readying 10 tech SMEs for investors, with a possible route to AltX. Fitting teacher, too: TIA sold half of Kapa Biosystems for R80m, months before the whole thing went for R7.3bn.

🐿️ Squirrel Away Lists Up. Speaking of listing: Kids' investment gifting app Squirrel Away has listed its own ETF on the JSE under the ticker SQRL, managed in-house and listed via EasyETFs. One of the first investments of our partner Octoco’s venture arm.

🏠 Airbnb Gets AI Search. Airbnb has launched AI search in the US: describe what you want, by text or voice. It’s still being tested, so not in SA yet. As they say: building AI search is easy; building one that doesn't kill conversion is the hard part.

🥩 Champagne, But Biltong. The Game Meat Industry chair wants biltong protected like Rooibos, but by production standards rather than geography, so UK diaspora makers aren't shut out. There’s no law yet, but a smart move for SA industries.

🌍 Built for Africa. Most global payments providers weren't built for African customers. Paystack powers online and offline payments across 10+ countries with the local payment methods, settlement speed and conversion rates your customers expect.*

🧾 Know Your Client Costs? Quick test: can you say, in rands, what your biggest client costs to service? Most scaling businesses can't; the numbers sit in three tools that never talk. Now, a real SA agency has finally joined them up.*

* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.

Yesterday, we showed you Taurine Tech's Axon smart network switch, asking what you do when the Wi-Fi dies. Four in five of you go straight to prayer…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🔌 Unplug it, count to ten, pray (80%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📞 Phone the ISP, lose the will (5%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🐌 Blame whoever's streaming in 4K (15%)

💻 Software Developer @ Bag Learning

☕ Mid-Senior Java Engineer @ Yoyo

🧠 Lead Data Engineer @ Absa Group

🎨 Front-End (Angular) Technical Lead @ Momentum

🛡️ Product Manager II, Financial Crime Operations @ Kraken

Last month, we brought together a group of founders in Joburg for an afternoon of padel, great conversations and new connections. This is what the Founder Collab community is all about: bringing ambitious people together to connect, collaborate and grow. You should join if you want in.

Don't miss all the extra operator interviews and insights content we do on our social channels — come enjoy the vibez.

Founders Café, 10 Oct, Cape Town: A half-day founder morning, 50 seats, micro-talks and a R4'000+ gift bag. Get tickets.

Scaling Globally, Managing Locally, 15 Oct, Cape Town: OCFO, Sudor, Ruby Digital and Travelstart on growing offshore without losing control at home. Get tickets.

Leather 101 Workshop, 24 Oct, Kleinmond: Cut, stitch and finish your own leather keyring in 90 minutes, tea and cake included. Get tickets.

Powered by Radi. Want your business event in front of 36,000 The Open Letter readers? Host it on Radi, and it lands here.

🎨 Tool to Try: PitchWorx gives you unlimited on-demand design on a flat monthly subscription.

💥 That's Interesting: The Hulk's famous lab-accident origin actually comes from the 1970s TV show. In the comics, Bruce Banner got his powers from an atomic bomb blast while saving a teenager on a military test site.