Happy Tuesday, N2K reader!

This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how you should totally give all your medical data to a robot. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

And now for some news you really N2K…

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

What’s the stock market up to, eh?*

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Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

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Pay this guy $1,000, and he'll save you more on a new car

Tired of feeling outsmarted at the car dealership? Tomi Mikula (above) has built a thriving business doing the haggling for you.

The 33-year-old (I might need to see some ID, though, Tomi…) spent over a decade working at dealerships before launching Delivrd, a company that hires professional negotiators handle car purchases on your behalf for a flat $1,000 fee. With car payments hitting record highs — one in five buyers now commit to $1,000+ monthly payments — Mikula's unconventional service is resonating with frustrated consumers.

"You're hiring a middleman to deal with the middleman to make the middleman more efficient," Mikula explained from his Harry Potter-themed home office near Charlotte, N.C., in conversation with the Wall Street Journal.

His strategy? Stay off the showroom floor entirely. Working by phone prevents buyers from feeling too invested to walk away. Mikula also livestreams negotiations to 600,000 followers on TikTok and YouTube, turning tense dealer calls into entertainment.

The results speak for themselves. Payam Amiri studied Mikula's videos before buying his first new car and walked away with a 2026 Mazda CX-50 Premium for $4,000 under asking price. "They came down much faster," he said after challenging a salesperson with local inventory data.

Some dealers refuse Mikula's calls. Others hang up after recognizing his voice. But with Delivrd now generating $200,000 monthly in revenue, it's clear plenty of car buyers are ready to let someone else fight those battles. How about you?

Why Apple won’t regret being cheap on AI

While tech giants pour hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure, Apple $AAPL ( ▲ 1.08% ) is taking a radically different approach, and it might just be the smartest move in the industry, writes investor Daniel J. Arbess in the Wall Street Journal.  

The numbers are striking: Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 1.96% ) , Alphabet $GOOGL ( ▲ 1.09% ) , Meta $META ( ▲ 2.33% ) , and Microsoft $MSFT ( ▲ 1.11% ) are collectively investing $700 billion in AI infrastructure this year. Apple? A mere $14 billion. On social media, charts comparing these figures look like "four skyscrapers and a mailbox."

But Apple isn't behind — it's making a calculated wager that the current AI spending frenzy will deliver poor returns. As Arbess explains, Apple is betting "that AI models will commoditize and shrink, that existing product lines will absorb the workloads the cloud was built to serve, and that the durable franchise belongs to whoever owns the customer."

And no one owns more customers than Apple.

With 2.5 billion active devices worldwide, Apple has essentially distributed its own data center "into the pockets and onto the desks of a quarter of the world's connected population." The company's new M5 chip can run sophisticated AI models locally — drafting legal briefs, debugging code — in under three seconds without internet access.

Meanwhile, competitors face financial strain. Bloomberg projects Amazon's free cash flow will turn negative in 2026, while Alphabet's could collapse nearly 90%.

Apple's strategy for cloud AI it can't handle locally? License it. By paying roughly $1 billion annually for Google's Gemini, Apple is essentially "renting the penthouse while its competitors mortgage the building."

The question facing investors: Does consumer AI require half a trillion in infrastructure —or 2.5 billion devices already built and paid for?

Quote of the Day

Why Samsung is teaching school kids about AI

AI, which I’m told stands for something called “Artificial Intelligence,” is reshaping education and future careers, so Samsung intends on making it accessible to students across the country. The company’s "Solve for Tomorrow" program recently introduced the “AI in Action Lab,” a partnership with the Mark Cuban Foundation, aiming to give high school students hands-on experience with AI for applications like music and community problem-solving.

"81% of educators from recent research that we've done have reported that they don't have any AI training. They're looking for resources," says Alison Stransky, Samsung's chief marketing officer. To help, the program offers online AI boot camps and equips classrooms with grants and technology, emphasizing that "...we also believe that hands-on learning is where it's gonna make a big difference."

Solve for Tomorrow is a STEM competition for students in grades 6–12 use technology to solve community problems. Past projects include an AI-powered oral cancer screening app and an AI-enabled wound care badge, demonstrating the students’ capacity for empathy and innovation. This work aligns with Samsung's “AI for All” mission, as "technology should be equitable, ubiquitous everywhere," Stranksy said.

As long as it’s Samsung technology, of course.

Why Gen Z fears AI automation the most

Anxiety is prevalent among younger generations about the rise of AI. Gene Marks, a Forbes columnist and small business owner, advises, "everybody's got to calm down about AI replacing them anytime soon with jobs." He reassures that technology always creates new opportunities, noting he has a list of "like 50 job titles that didn't even exist 20 years ago."

Instead of fearing displacement, Marks thinks Gen Z should embrace AI as an upskilling tool. He explains that the entry-level job of the past "doesn't exist anymore."