Anthropic Bombshell: 57% Deploy AI Agents — 80% Already Cashing Real ROI
Stablecoins Complement TradFi—Not Replace It: Pitchbook’s 5 Inconvenient Truths
Thanks for reading the “Cashless” newsletter, an insider’s view on Asia’s fintech, CBDC, and AI for anyone striving to understand “the Asia Century.” I’m Rich Turrin, and these are my hard-hitting insights designed to educate and inform. Subscribe to get these emerging trends directly in your inbox every Sunday. Every week, I scan thousands of articles to find only the best and most valuable for you. Subscribe to get my expertly curated news straight to your inbox each week. Free is good, but paid is better.
Topics:
Anthropic Bombshell: 57% Deploy AI Agents — 80% Already Cashing Real ROI
OpenAI’s Rosy GenAI Survey: 60 Min Saved Per Worker—Silent on Bottom-Line ROI
Unlocking AI Agent Productivity Gains—Enforce Autonomy Limits & Keep Humans in the Loop
AI, the biggest tech revolution in history, is being led by executives who are 95% tech-illiterate.
Stablecoins Complement TradFi—Not Replace It: Pitchbook’s 5 Inconvenient Truths
NEW The AI Trust Gap: Why China Will Win the AI War Premium subscribers only. People cannot be forced to use AI, trust drives mass adoption
NEW Tokenized Deposits: Banks’ Answer to Stablecoins Premium subscribers only. Read how banks are not giving up control of payments without a fight.
The AI Bubble Bursts: Implementation Results Reveal Difficulties Premium subscribers only. A special collection of papers that confirms the AI bubble is ready to pop.
Bonus Read ✦ Deloitte Tech Trends 2026: AI Finally Scales—But Only If You Rebuild Everything
Happy Sunday!
This week, we talk about rebuilding with AI. The image above is an homage to classic Song Dynasty masters, lovingly updated to become a “digital landscape” built with scenes of modern construction.
This is what our AI future will look like: companies that may outwardly resemble their former selves but internally reconstructed with AI.
The artist laments “how tradition is getting replaced by modern architecture and industrialized city lives.”
Like the artist, we may eventually lament how AI will replace some traditions in our new AI world.
Here’s what’s inside this week:
AI Year-End Reports Anthropic vs. OpenAI
I just loved how the annual “status of AI reports” for Anthropic and OpenAI came out within days of one another to allow for direct comparison.
The difference couldn’t have been greater with Anthropic winning the competition by showing real and impressive ROI gains for the users of its agentic AI systems.
In contrast, OpenAI promoted its substantial 8x increase in messaging volume, which, while impressive, doesn’t show the financial benefit to GenAI users.
OpenAI seems to have lost the plot that its clients are supposed to make money with GenAI.
AI Agents ‘do-it-for-me” delay
Agentic AI and the “do-it-for-me” economy are most definitely on their way, even if as this report shows, it will take longer to arrive than advertised.
I loved this report because it was by Cornell researchers, not big tech or consultants.
In the end, the report showed that in order to make AI agents reliable, they have to be tightly constrained with humans in the loop.
Who’s leading the AI charge?
Just how ill-equipped are today’s executive teams to manage the AI revolution?
McKinsey looked at LinkedIn profiles of executives and claims that the problem with AI isn’t the tech but that 95% of executives are tech-illiterate.
Don’t always blame AI when things go wrong.
Stablecoins’ 5 Inconvenient Truths
Once again, I tackle stablecoins’ dark side! Not because I dislike stablecoins, I don’t, but I do dislike the unobjective press coverage they receive.
Unsurprisingly, Pitchbook claims that the number one problem with stablecoins is that their benefits are being oversold.
This tracks perfectly with the lack of rigour in the way that stablecoins are covered in the press.
Bonus Read: AI Finally Scales—But Only If You Rebuild Everything
Deloitte’s “Tech Trends 2026” is a fun read and highlights five interconnected AI trends shaping enterprise technology in 2026.
While AI is capable of amazing feats, it requires companies to rebuild and rethink their infrastructure and business models.
AI leaders realize this and are hard at work on both, while laggards don’t seem to have gotten the message.
Paywalls
You may notice that some of my past articles are getting paywalls and that I am producing new premium content. I’ll do my best to keep these weekly newsletter articles open to all for a few weeks, but some may eventually get paywalls.
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To all subscribers, my heartfelt thanks for opening your inbox and being part of this journey!
Rich
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Anthropic Bombshell: 57% Deploy AI Agents — 80% Already Cashing Real ROI
Anthropic delivers on ROI!
Anthropic’s Claude surveyed 500 technical leaders and found that 57% now deploy AI agents for multi-stage workflows, and 80% already see measurable economic returns.
These are fabulous results, and for once, try as I might, I can’t find a catch.
Perhaps the only small problem is that the “runaway” leading use case for 90% of those surveyed is coding.
OpenAI’s Rosy GenAI Survey: 60 Min Saved Per Worker—Silent on Bottom-Line ROI
Adoption soars, but the AI divide widens—haves crush have-nots
OpenAI surveys 9000 workers across 100 enterprises and looks at usage data to paint a rosy picture of GenAI integration and scaling while ignoring ROI.
OpenAI’s rosy assessment focuses on volume alone and flies in the face of McKinsey’s recent report, which claims that “bottom-line gains from AI remain elusive.”
Unlocking AI Agent Productivity Gains—Enforce Autonomy Limits & Keep Humans in the Loop
Agents fall short of the “do-it-for-me” hype!
Cornell researchers surveyed AI agent users, finding that productivity is the primary motive for AI agent adoption and that they consistently provide gains, but only when tightly constrained!
AI, the biggest tech revolution in history, is being led by executives who are 95% tech-illiterate.
What could possibly go wrong?
Only 17% of Fortune 500 senior leaders have meaningful technical skills — just 5% ever held a technical role.
That’s why the single biggest bottleneck holding back enterprise AI isn’t the tech.
Stablecoins Complement TradFi—Not Replace It: Pitchbook’s 5 Inconvenient Truths
5 Stablecoin Problems the Entire Hype Machine Pretends Don’t Exist
Pitchbook sees stablecoins as “complementing rather than replacing traditional finance,” while analyzing their “imperfections” in an honest and hype-free discussion!
Every day, we’re bombarded with the idea that stablecoins will take over payments, and while they might succeed in some sectors, they might not be as successful as advertised.
New Premium Content ✦ The AI Trust Gap: Why China Will Win the AI War
People cannot be forced to use AI; only trust can drive mass adoption
A striking new Edelman survey shows 54% of people in China embrace the growing use of AI, while just 17% of Americans feel the same.
Edelman’s poll surveyed over 5000 respondents in Brazil, China, Germany, the UK, and the US and shows that developing nations embrace AI far more than developed nations.
New Premium Content ✦ Tokenized Deposits: Banks’ Answer to Stablecoins
Banks won’t go down without a fight!
Dear Premium subscriber, thanks for your support! We are rapidly heading toward a world where wholesale transfers will use either CBDC, Stablecoins, or tokenized deposits.
Let’s take a look at some of my recent writings on tokenized deposits to see how they are in use now and are banks’ way of fighting back.
Premium Content ✦ The AI Bubble Bursts: Implementation Results Reveal Difficulties
A special collection of papers that confirms the AI bubble is ready to pop.
Dear Premium subscriber, thanks for your support! The question on everyone’s mind right now is whether we are in the midst of an AI bubble that is ready to pop.
Bonus Read✦ Deloitte Tech Trends 2026: AI Finally Scales—But Only If You Rebuild Everything
Deloitte nails it with this year’s theme of AI transitioning from experimentation to scaled impact.
The catch: Leading organizations aren’t just layering AI on old processes—they’re redesigning work from the ground up to drive measurable outcomes.
Too many still risk the critical mistake of treating AI as mere process automation rather than a catalyst for fundamental business redesign.
👉Here are the five interconnected trends shaping enterprise technology in 2026:
AI-enabled robots → Intelligent systems move from factories into dynamic human environments, learning and adapting in real time.
AI agents → Only 11% have them in production — success demands AI-first workflows and hybrid human-digital teams.
AI infrastructure → Usage is exploding faster than costs are falling; hybrid (cloud + on-prem + edge) and purpose-built data centers are becoming mandatory.
IT operating model → AI is rewiring tech delivery — leaner, faster, more adaptive organizations anchored to business outcomes.
AI’s cyber paradox → The same tech expanding attack surfaces is also powering proactive, machine-speed defenses.
One of my favorite quotes:
“Innovation compounds. The gap between laggards and leaders grows exponentially. How you respond determines which side of that gap you’re on.”
Hot Topics for Premium Subscribers only
Imagine having someone combing through thousands of articles, over 50 RSS feeds, and 25 meticulously crafted Google searches—all to handpick the absolute best reports, just for you.
Each week, I distill this ocean of information into five concise, high-value reports, sharing the most essential knowledge you need to stay ahead.
But that’s not all. I also collect additional exclusive, hard-to-find gems, which I put in the section below—all in PDF format with my brief expert commentary.
To download them, no corporate email is required, no searching, and no links to other places are required. With a paid subscription, these insights are just a click away.
Here’s what you’re missing out on this week in the Premium Subscriber-only section below:
Tokenized Money Markets:
Tokenised money market funds (TMMFs) are hot and drawing investors and controversy. See the good and the bad of this hot asset class.
AI in Risk Management
While AI is certainly adding risks of its own, it is also helping risk managers to tackle risks in a way never before known.
Asset Tokenization
Two great reads a 101 paper on how to understand tokenization and a paper showing where tokenization is going across the globe.
And that’s just a selection of today’s cache of insightful PDF reports! You’re also missing the infamous Chart of the Day, which today covers: “The Largest Unconnected Populations.”
Right now, 12 premium reports are paywalled. Unlock them below and keep your edge over everyone else.
