Pick your edge. Build it with your own hands.

This week, we saw three major players—OpenAI, Windsurf, and Microsoft—double down on a clear direction: agentic AI. These aren’t just tools anymore. They’re coders. Engineers. Operators.

But here’s the thing I keep learning as a founder: no agent can replace the edge you build by doing the work yourself.

I’m a hands-on leader. Not because it’s efficient. But because it reveals truths that delegation hides. You see the real bottlenecks. You gain real respect. And over time, your expertise compounds.

In Today’s AI Simplified: 

• Founder’s Insight: In the early stages, you can’t lead from a distance. You need to do—ship the work, dig into the process, and learn what’s really slowing things down. That’s how you earn clarity, optimize processes, and gain the respect that only real expertise brings.
• AI News: OpenAI unveils Codex, a cloud-based coding agent that writes, debugs, and ships code from your repo—no IDE required. Windsurf launches SWE-1, a full-stack AI model family for every messy stage of software engineering. Microsoft Build 2025 introduces agentic AI across GitHub, Azure, and Windows—marking the dawn of the agent-powered web.
• AI Spotlights: TikTok rolls out AI Alive, turning static images into animated videos in Stories—blending consumer creativity with generative AI. Tool of the Week: Poe – a multi-model AI chat platform where you can explore Claude, GPT-4, DALL-E 3, and more, all in one place.

Here are 3 reasons why I choose the hands-on leadership style:

✅ When you first start operating a company, you need to actually do stuff on your own as a startup founder to understand all the aspects of the company that you’ve created.

✅ When you deep-dive into a certain direction of the company and do hands-on investigations, you will ultimately realize what bottlenecks your employees might have. This will boost productivity and speed of procedures greatly.

✅ When you gain expertise in a certain area of work you do in the company, you will get respect, recognition, and reassurance from your employees and colleagues. Your arguments and thoughts will become more professional compared to hands-off delegation of the projects.

1. Introducing Codex: A Cloud-Based Software Engineer Powered by AI

OpenAI has unveiled Codex, a cloud-based software engineering agent now available in research preview. Built on the new codex-1 model (a variant of OpenAI’s o3 series), Codex is designed to assist with real-world coding tasks—including writing features, debugging, answering questions about your codebase, and even submitting pull requests. Each task runs in an isolated cloud environment, preloaded with your repo.

Key Highlights

• Available now for ChatGPT Pro, Team, and Enterprise users (Plus coming soon)
• Works directly from the ChatGPT sidebar
• Handles tasks independently, running tests and citing terminal logs for traceability
• Reads, edits, and executes code in secure sandboxes
• Learns coding preferences and aligns output with human-written code

Why it matters:

Codex signals a new phase in developer productivity tools—one where AI doesn’t just autocomplete your code but actively collaborates with you in managing and shipping software. It’s a step toward autonomous agents that understand your repo, follow dev best practices, and contribute like a real teammate.

🎥 Watch this video to explore more

2. Windsurf Launches SWE-1: The First True Software Engineering AI Models

Windsurf is flipping the AI playbook with SWE-1, a family of models engineered to turbocharge all phases of software development, not just coding lines.

Why SWE-1? Coding is just the tip of the iceberg. Real software engineering is juggling terminals, testing, debugging, researching, and iterating on messy, incomplete projects. SWE-1 is built for that chaos, not just syntax, but strategy.

• The SWE-1 Lineup:
  SWE-1: Powerhouse model with Claude 3.5-level reasoning, cheaper to serve, free promo for paid users.
  SWE-1-lite: A leaner, sharper model replacing the Cascade Base, unlimited use for everyone.
  SWE-1-mini: Lightning-fast, small footprint, powering Windsurf Tab experience for all users.

Why It Matters: SWE-1 models aim to accelerate software engineering by 99% — not just code autocomplete, but a full teammate that handles complexity, ambiguity, and long-term engineering problems.

3. Microsoft Build 2025: The age of AI agents

Microsoft just dropped a major update at Build 2025 — and it’s all about AI agents. We're now living in the age of agentic AI, where models can reason, remember, and execute tasks across complex environments. Microsoft calls this the start of the open agentic web.

What’s new:

• GitHub Copilot becomes an agent: It's evolving from an assistant to an AI coding partner with asynchronous agent mode, open-source chat, and enterprise-grade controls.
• Windows AI Foundry: Developers can now run open-source LLMs or fine-tune proprietary models on Windows with simple APIs.
• Azure AI Foundry: Hosts 1,900+ models, adds tools like Model Router and Leaderboard, and now supports Grok 3 from xAI.
• Copilot Studio upgrades: Teams can now train domain-specific agents and orchestrate multi-agent workflows inside Microsoft 365.
• Enterprise controls: Entra Agent ID helps manage AI agents securely; new governance tools reduce “agent sprawl.”
• NLWeb: A new open standard to make websites agent-friendly — like HTML but for AI.
• Microsoft Discovery: A new platform to accelerate scientific research using agentic AI.

With GitHub, Azure, Windows, and Copilot all going agentic — this isn’t just another AI update. It’s Microsoft positioning itself as the operating system of the agent-powered web.

Tool of the week

Poe – Multi-Model AI Chat Platform

In a landscape where AI tools are becoming increasingly specialized, Poe offers a simple yet powerful approach: one platform, multiple models. Created by Quora, Poe lets users interact with a range of leading AI models—including ChatGPT, GPT-4, Claude 3, and DALLE 3—all in a single, intuitive interface.

Whether you're exploring creative ideas, solving technical problems, or just curious about different AI capabilities, Poe makes it easy to compare and engage with multiple tools side by side.

Key Features

• Multi-model access: Switch between ChatGPT, Claude, GPT-4, and more, depending on your needs.
• Secure, frictionless login: Sign in easily via Google or Apple.
• Wide range of use cases: From casual conversation and research to content generation and coding support.

Social Buzz

TikTok Launches AI Alive to Animate Still Photos into Stories

TikTok has rolled out a new AI-powered feature called AI Alive, designed to transform static images into immersive, animated videos within TikTok Stories. This marks TikTok’s first venture into AI-driven image-to-video creation, allowing users to enhance their visual storytelling without needing any prior editing experience.

Available through the Story Camera, AI Alive brings motion and atmosphere to still photos, turning simple moments—like a sunset or a group selfie—into short, cinematic clips. The feature is part of TikTok’s broader effort to make creativity more accessible and dynamic for its massive user base.

To ensure safety and transparency, AI Alive content goes through several moderation steps before being published. Each generated video is clearly labeled as AI-created and includes C2PA metadata, which helps preserve attribution even when content is shared beyond the platform.

AI Alive reflects the growing integration of intuitive, consumer-facing AI tools into mainstream platforms, offering users new ways to tell stories and connect with their audiences.

AI Event Pick

The AI Experience Summit: Redefining Work and Leadership in the Age of AI

📅 Date: June 3 - 5

The AI Experience Summit—hosted by Hacking HR—will bring together business, HR, and technology leaders for a three-day virtual event focused on the transformative impact of AI in the workplace. As AI evolves beyond automation into a strategic driver of innovation, the summit aims to equip professionals with the tools and insights needed to navigate this shift.

The agenda includes sessions on integrating AI into business strategy, the evolving role of human-AI collaboration, and frameworks for ethical AI implementation. With over 81,000 attendees across previous events, Hacking HR has positioned this summit as a key platform for exploring how AI is reshaping leadership, workforce capabilities, and long-term business success.