WGMaTW: CPO Evolution, Super Bowl AI Wars, and the Return of Big VC Bets
What Got My Attention This Week — as a Product Leader
Here’s what got my attention this week — a short list of things I read and watched recently that felt worth pausing on, as a product leader.
This week had a clear theme: power is shifting between roles, tools, and capital.
1/ Debates over the future of the CPO role
With the rise of AI, a question that may have felt fringe a year or two ago is now being discussed openly on LinkedIn:
Could the CPO role disappear within five years?
“PREDICTION: THE CPO ROLE WILL VANISH IN FIVE YEARS” — Gokul Rajaram
After saying this, the comments came in — some nodding along, others pushing back hard. What matters isn’t whether the prediction comes true. It’s that the conditions making it a worthwhile questions are already here.
AI is compressing the distance between strategy and execution. Teams are getting smaller. Builders are closer to customers. And leadership roles that exist primarily to coordinate, translate, or arbitrate are under pressure.
Aakash Gupta, unlike Gokul, argues the CPO role is far from dead:
“The companies winning will have CPOs with broader scope, not narrower. The title might evolve. The power concentrates.” — Aakash Gupta
Personally, I don’t think product leadership is going away — but its shape is most definitely changing.
Lines will blur. Some teams will over-index on technical leader or business credibility. Others will over-index on judgment, taste, and decision-making. CPOs, CTOs, CPTOs, and anyone aspiring to lead product vision, strategy, and execution need to embrace the shift and get good at the balancing act. Art and science. Speed and results. Customers and stakeholders. The forrest, and the trees.
In a way, it’s nothing new under the sun. Just less room for hesitation.
Carpe diem. C'est la vie.
2/ Codex, Opus, and the AI Super Bowl moment
This week felt like an AI Super Bowl.
OpenAI released a new version of Codex, positioning it as another major step forward for AI-assisted software development. The release is another escalation in the AI arms race.
“Is this a sign that artificial intelligence is becoming self-improving?” — Timothy Beck Werth, Mashable
According to Mashable, OpenAI said that the new GPT-5.3-Codex model is its ‘first model that was instrumental in creating itself.’ ChatGPT wouldn’t confirm or deny.
Meanwhile, Anthropic announced Claude Opus 4.6 at around the same time:
“Drop what you are doing. Opus 4.6 is out. And it officially puts the “ClawdBot” era to shame.” — John Peslar
Anthropic also shared a multi-ad campaign of Claude ads for the Super Bowl. Maybe its the recency and relevance, but it felt like one of the most memorable competitive tech campaigns since ‘Get a Mac.’
“Anthropic absolutely killed OpenAI in their Super Bowl ad. Their positioning in the AI race has been immaculate: Thoughtful, with a human touch, and now we can add humor to that list too.” — Willem Evers
The benchmarks and feature lists continue to impress, raise questions, and draw attention in their own right, but that’s to be expected.
What’s more interesting is that we’re also seeing a shift in tone. There’s increased competition, and the pie seems to be getting bigger, and people are taking sides. Beyond the model comparisons, I’m noticing less questions about trust for AI in general, and more questions around trust for each of the models/companies/brands. Questions like…
Which model do you want open all day?
Which one do you reach for first?
Which one fits how you actually think and work?
Which one can you see doing the right thing?
The competition isn’t just about who’s smarter and faster. It’s also about what feels dependable, and trustworthy.
3/ Global VC investment is surging again (with AI leading the way)
Global VC investment surged to $55 billion at the start of 2026, with AI accounting for a significant share of total funding:
“Funding last month more than doubled from $25.5 billion a year earlier and was up over 50% from December…. A total of $40.9 billion (74% of all funding) went to rounds of $100 million and more, and $31.7 billion (57% of funding) went to AI-related companies.”
— Gené Teare, Crunchbase
Most of the dollars flowed into late-stage rounds and large, already-scaled AI companies and perceived winners. For example, mega-rounds for players like xAI.
Investors are doubling down on companies they believe can dominate foundational layers, platforms, and distribution. While the funding environment is improving, the bar for ‘fundable’ is higher, not lower. Advantage compounds fastest for companies with great momentum.
Bonus: Getting paid to vibe code
Vibe coding is now a full-time professional career, and not having a technical background can actually be an advantage — as Lazar Jovanovic, from Lovable and Starter Story, can attest.
He spoke with Lenny Rachitsky about how coding is no longer the bottleneck… Clarity is. He also shared tips on writing PRDs, debugging, being deliberate with AI tools, studying elite design work, and building in public.
