{"id":2126361,"date":"2026-09-03T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2126361"},"modified":"2026-09-03T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T11:00:00","slug":"how-sonos-rebooted-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2126361","title":{"rendered":"How Sonos rebooted itself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><main id=\"content\"><\/p>\n<div class>\n<article>\n<div class=\"duet--article--lede duet--page-layout--feature-article _1se63890\">\n<div class=\"duet--ledes--feature-lede _1m5y14k0\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k1\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k6 _1m5y14k7\">\n<div class=\"_1xtd7xb5 _1xtd7xb4\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1044qiz7\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k2 _1044qiz3\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k3\">\n<div class=\"_5s9d1e0 _5s9d1e2\">\n<div class=\"_5s9d1e3\"><span class=\"_29pwo217\"><\/p>\n<ul class=\"_1phh1th0\">\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-breadcrumb-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjEzNA==\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q815 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89ka _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Podcasts<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjEzNA==-breadcrumb\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Podcasts<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\">See All <!-- -->Podcasts<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-breadcrumb-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjU4\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q815 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89ka _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Tech<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjU4-breadcrumb\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Tech<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\">See All <!-- -->Tech<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-breadcrumb-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjMwNA==\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q815 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89ka _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Decoder<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjMwNA==-breadcrumb\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Decoder<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel\">See All <!-- -->Decoder<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/span><\/div>\n<div class>\n<h1 class=\"cbn62f2 cbn62f0 cbn62f7 _19wv7tcb _19wv7tc9\">How Sonos rebooted itself<\/h1>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup cbn62fi cbn62fg _19wv7tcb _19wv7tc1\">CEO Tom Conrad on cleaning up Sonos\u2019 app redesign mess and turning a speaker company into a software platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_5s9d1ea\">\n<p class=\"pf8b0f0 _19wv7tcb\">If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. <a class=\"pf8b0f1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ethics-statement\">See our ethics statement.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo22 _29pwo20 _29pwo221\">\n<div class=\"_29pwo29 _29pwo2h\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-byline _19wv7tcb _1p3b6390\"><span class><span>by<\/span> <!-- --> <span aria-expanded=\"false\" role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\"><span id=\"follow-author-author_byline_lead-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx\" class=\"t0jcdf0 gnx4pm0 _1p3b6392 _1p3b6394 t0jcdf1\"><span class=\"t0jcdf2\"><span class=\"_1ajq89ka _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><\/span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx-author_byline_lead\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1bw37384\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nilay Patel\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1bw37385 i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/author_profile_images\/195834\/NILAY_PATEL.0.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5 _1bw37380\">Nilay Patel<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1bw37381\">\n<div class=\"_1bw37382\">Editor-in-Chief<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/authors\/nilay-patel\">See All by <!-- -->Nilay Patel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p><\/span><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw6 g4xafw1 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _19wv7tcb\"><time datetime=\"2026-09-03T14:00:00+00:00\">Sep 3, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo2m\">\n<div class=\"_29pwo2x _29pwo215\"><span class=\"_29pwo216 _29pwo217\"><\/p>\n<ul class=\"duet--article--share-buttons _1e9wo7z0\">\n<li>\n<div class=\"_1e9wo7zo\"><button aria-label=\"Copy link\" class=\"_1e9wo7z3 _1e9wo7z1\"><title>Link<\/title><\/button><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\" aria-label=\"Share article\" class=\"_1e9wo7z3 _1e9wo7z1\"><title>Share<\/title><\/button><\/li>\n<li><\/ul>\n<p><\/span><span class=\"_29pwo224 _1044qizr _29pwo216 _29pwo217\"><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo219\">\n<div class=\"o1ls98 o1ls90 o1ls92h\">\n<div class=\"o1ls90 o1ls9f o1ls99\" data-concert=\"article_sponsorship_white_mobile_and_tablet\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo21u\">\n<div class=\"_29pwo21h\">\n<div class=\"o1ls98 o1ls90 o1ls92i\">\n<div class=\"o1ls90 o1ls9d o1ls99\" data-concert=\"article_sponsorship_white_desktop\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_29pwo218 _1044qizp\">\n<p class=\"pf8b0f0 _19wv7tcb\">If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. <a class=\"pf8b0f1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ethics-statement\">See our ethics statement.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1xtd7xb0\">\n<div class=\"_1m5y14k4\">\n<div class=\"_19dn9e80\">\n<div class=\"_19dn9e82 _19dn9e81 sticky-nav-trigger\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"r21yj70\">\n<div class=\"f8x97j3 _1044qizz\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--layout--entry-body-container j2p4kx0 _1044qiz3 _1044qiz17\">\n<div class=\"j2p4kx1\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--entry-body mebm7x0\">\n<div class=\"duet--ledes--standard-lede-bottom\">\n<div class=\"h9mca15\">\n<div class=\"waimqt2 waimqt0\">\n<div class=\"_4aoxp30 _4aoxp31\">\n<div class=\"_4aoxp33\"><a class=\"_4aoxp36\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/authors\/nilay-patel\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nilay Patel\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"36\" height=\"36\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"_4aoxp34\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/author_profile_images\/195834\/NILAY_PATEL.0.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=96\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"_4aoxp35\"><span aria-expanded=\"false\" role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\"><span id=\"follow-author-standard_article_details-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx\" class=\"t0jcdf0 gnx4pm0 _1p3b6392 _1p3b6393 t0jcdf1\"><span class=\"t0jcdf2\"><span class=\"_1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><\/span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx-standard_article_details\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1bw37384\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nilay Patel\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1bw37385 i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/author_profile_images\/195834\/NILAY_PATEL.0.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5 _1bw37380\">Nilay Patel<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1bw37381\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/authors\/nilay-patel\">See All by <!-- -->Nilay Patel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p> <span class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _4aoxp37\">is editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel\"><b>Decoder podcast<\/b><\/a>, and co-host of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/the-vergecast\"><b>The Vergecast<\/b><\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"zephr-anchor\" class=\"_1044qiz13\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b2 _18mzr4b0 _18mzr4b7 _18mzr4b5 _19wv7tc1 _18mzr4bb\">Today, I\u2019m talking with Tom Conrad, the CEO of Sonos. Tom and I have known each other for a long time \u2014 he was the chief technology officer of Pandora, VP of product at Snap, and the chief product officer of Quibi. He was also on the board at Sonos during its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2025\/1\/13\/24342282\/sonos-app-redesign-controversy-full-story\">disastrous 2024 app redesign<\/a> that threatened to crash the entire brand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Tom took over as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2025\/1\/13\/24342179\/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-resignation-reason-app\">interim CEO to right the ship<\/a> during that period, and then took the permanent role just about a year ago. As you\u2019ll hear him say, he thinks Sonos is fully out of that period now, and on to its next chapter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/987129\/sonos-27-ace-ultra-beam-ultra-announcement\">with a huge product and platform launch called Sonos 27<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--block-placement _1xorkac2 _1xorkac0 duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--highlight _1044qizl _1upt4f20\">\n<div class=\"_1upt4f21\"><\/div>\n<div>\n<div style=\"position:relative\">\n<div class>\n<div class>\n<div style=\"background-image:none\" class=\"duet--media--content-warning _1k8kvzd0\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--image-gallery-image _1pegheu0\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1\" id=\"dmcyOmltYWdlOjU5NQ==\"><a class=\"_1pegheu1\" href=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/24792604\/The_Verge_Decoder_Tileart.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0,0,100,100\" data-pswp-height=\"3000\" data-pswp-width=\"3000\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/24792604\/The_Verge_Decoder_Tileart.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1upt4f24\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1 _1upt4f27\"><em>Verge<\/em> subscribers, don\u2019t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free <em>Decoder<\/em> wherever you get your podcasts. Head <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/account\/podcasts\">here<\/a>. Not a subscriber? You can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/subscribe\">sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I mean, come on, you all listen to the show. That is all the most <em>Decoder<\/em> bait imaginable. I have been dying to have Tom on the show to talk about how the board decided to move on from previous CEO Patrick Spence, how he diagnosed the issues inside the company, and what decisions he made to fix them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Those fixes involved a lot of big changes: to the company\u2019s structure, its product lineup, and how it thinks about itself and what its product fundamentally is. That\u2019s that new platform, Sonos 27, which you\u2019ll hear Tom call a new foundation for the company that makes every Sonos product work better as part of a system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">There\u2019s a lot here, including how AI assistants can work across the system, the idea of having a mesh network of little computers in your home disguised as speakers, and of course, the testy relationship between Sonos and Google, which means Google\u2019s Gemini assistant isn\u2019t available on Sonos devices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Oh, and of course we got into the weeds about smart home standards, because I am a smart home nerd and simply cannot help myself. But to his credit, Tom was willing to nerd out with me, and I think this conversation is pretty fun because of it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Okay: Sonos CEO Tom Conrad. Here we go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--block-placement _1xorkac1 _1xorkac0 duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1h0hdr20\">\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><em>This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Tom Conrad, you\u2019re the CEO of Sonos. Welcome to <\/strong><strong><em>Decoder<\/em><\/strong><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Thank you. As they say, it\u2019s so great to be here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I am just going to say, finally, I have been asking you to be on the show for at least a year, if not before. I think the first time I met you was in the back of a car at CES when you were at Pandora.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Sounds right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>One hundred years ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">One hundred years ago. We were children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>[Laughs] We were little babies. That car was driven by a human driver. That\u2019s how far back it was.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>And then you took a turn through Quibi. You and I talked through that, and now you\u2019re at Sonos. As you know, I\u2019m a huge fan of Sonos. We had your predecessor, Patrick Spence, <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2019\/9\/5\/20849503\/patrick-spence-sonos-move-apple-siri-bluetooth-podcast-vergecast-interview\"><strong>on the show<\/strong><\/a><strong> a <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/22955336\/sonos-google-lawsuit-ceo-patrick-spence-interview\"><strong>bunch<\/strong><\/a><strong> of <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/23627331\/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-giles-martin-interview-era-100-300-podcast-vergecast\"><strong>times<\/strong><\/a><strong>. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Many things have happened, so I just want to start at the very beginning of this. You\u2019re about a year into being the permanent CEO of Sonos. You have a bunch of news to announce. Just tell us what you think Sonos is today. What is your conception of this company?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">When I came in the door, one of my earliest observations was that the company behaved like it was 100 percent hardware, but we\u2019re really 100 percent hardware and 100 percent software. And if you get either one of those even a little bit wrong, the impact is tremendous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So how does that show up really day-to-day? It was about returning the company to the idea that Sonos doesn\u2019t make these individual products, but we really make one thing \u2014 we make the Sonos system. It all has to hang together in a cohesive, interesting, and valuable way, or we\u2019re just not doing the work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">There\u2019s been a bunch of basic blocking and tackling, of course, both operationally and in the work that we\u2019re doing in the product family. But at the highest level, returning the company to the idea that we are a system for audio in the home has been the highest-level mantra.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>When you say come into the company, do you mean as a board member or as the CEO?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I mean, let\u2019s start the starter pistol in January of 2025, 18 months ago, when I stepped in first as interim CEO and then was lucky enough six months later to be asked to take the job more permanently.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The reason I asked that question is that you obviously have two different views of the company in different roles. We did have former CEO Patrick Spence on several occasions, and he said something very similar to me when he first took over \u2014 that Sonos was stuck in its ways. It was really focused on very, very slow iterations of hardware. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>He tried very hard to push the metabolism of the company to be much faster, and he talked about that very openly with me. That led eventually to what I think is a moment of true crisis: the app launch. It was a disaster. The system stopped working. That\u2019s when you came in to right the ship.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Tell me about that gap. You came in, and you said this company thinks it\u2019s a hardware company. That\u2019s what your predecessor had been saying, but it went sideways in big, meaningful ways. Tell me about that moment and why you think it was the same conception even when you came in.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So as you describe, I\u2019ve been involved with the company going back almost 20 years. We brought Pandora to Sonos in 2007, I think, and I was able to get to know the company as a partner before I got to know it as a board member. I came onto the board in 2016 right as Patrick became CEO. So from the vantage point of a board member, I got to participate in Patrick\u2019s chapter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I guess the way I would characterize his high-order thinking about the company in those early days was that, as you described, he wanted to turn the company into a product execution machine with an emphasis on hardware products. We call them NPIs, or new product introductions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">In the chapter before him, it was sometimes years between new Sonos products. Spence said, \u201cLook, we\u2019re going to make a company that knows how to ship a couple of great new products a year.\u201d And he did that. I mean, the company has reliably shipped a couple of great products, hardware products, every year, for close to a decade now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Sometimes, when you energize an organization around an idea, there are unintended consequences. I think one unintended consequence of that framing was that the company became very focused on the individual products, one at a time. Even as a board member, I received Roam as a portable speaker with a certain amount of battery life, waterproofing, and Bluetooth connectivity. I didn\u2019t really think about it as a member of the Sonos system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Even with the software work that we did, and with every product that we make, there is a tremendous amount of software effort and innovation that goes into them. But even the software that we made was very focused on the individual NPIs. \u201cWhat can we do in software to differentiate Move 2 from other speakers in that category?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">What was hard to do, and what was hard to prioritize in the company, was horizontal slices of software experiences that benefited all of the platform. So, in a way, I think some of that debt accumulated, and the company thought that the antidote was to recreate the app experience. And as you know, we made a bunch of mistakes at that moment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I\u2019m really proud of the fact that I think we\u2019re well beyond that chapter now, but we could have been much more thoughtful about how we qualified that product in the real world. We could have been much more thoughtful about how we rolled it out to customers. We could have, candidly, I think, examined the original impetus in the first place. It was very Sonos-motivated. We wanted to put the app on a modern architecture to make us more nimble.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">In my chapter at Sonos, I\u2019m really trying to bring it all back to how we can focus on the customer first. I\u2019m so inspired by talking to people on social media and in my inbox, and people in the industry, like you, about how we show up and solve the real problems that are happening in real households. I\u2019m so excited about the things we\u2019re going to talk to you about today because I think they\u2019re really an answer to many of those questions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>If you\u2019re a listener, you know I\u2019m familiar with Tom. The man\u2019s on Threads doing customer support every day. And actually, I should not take advantage of this. I hold myself back from asking you for direct customer support all the time.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Anytime. The way that you can tell it\u2019s actually me and not our crackerjack social team is that I often will let a Thread die before I should or fail to follow up with someone. So if we were executing perfectly on that, you would know it was fake Tom, but it\u2019s real Tom, and I do it when I can, but sometimes imperfectly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>At least it\u2019s not an AI avatar Tom. That\u2019s when we know it\u2019s going to go sideways.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">[Laughs] That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I know you\u2019re a <\/strong><strong><em>Decoder<\/em><\/strong><strong> fan, so I\u2019m going to make you sit in this for just one more moment because I find all of this to be really fascinating. The app shipped, and the feedback was immediately and intensely negative. Many, many things were broken. Speakers weren\u2019t working at weddings. This is a time of massive crisis. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The company goes to resolve it, but then you\u2019re on the board, and it\u2019s clear that there\u2019s going to be a leadership transition, that Patrick needs to go, and we need a new CEO. You\u2019re going to be the interim CEO. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Tell us about that process. Very, very few people will ever be in that kind of process or get insight into that process. What happened? What were the steps?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Well, I guess you start by saying that the last thing as a board that you want to do is to remove a CEO, particularly one who had as many successes as Patrick had. But I think as we looked at the company\u2019s progress recovering from the app crisis, and frankly the tenor of the conversation inside the company, we just decided that for this kind of step-function improvement we needed on some of these dimensions, we had to make some changes in leadership, and that included a CEO change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It was a wild experience for me because, I\u2019ll tell you, at no point in the decade leading up to that day in January did I imagine that I might end up the CEO of Sonos. But in the process, the board asked if I\u2019d be willing to step in on an interim basis, and it was an easy yes for me. It\u2019s a clich\u00e9, but I\u2019m a customer, and I love this product. There was a Sonos Move in the room when my daughter was born. You talked about weddings. I was watching friends and colleagues on the internet, frustrated by their experience. I wanted to come in and fix it. Of course, as a board member, I felt some real culpability in it. So [I was] thrilled at the chance to come in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">When you\u2019re an interim CEO, the assignment is really to keep the wheels on. The assignment at Sonos specifically was to right the ship. So during the period when the board was doing their comprehensive search for the person that they would ultimately decide was the right choice for the company, it was really easy for me to show up and just do that hard work of trying to get the company back on track.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">While I never imagined that I would land in this seat, I feel so blessed that it happened. I do love this job and continue to love the company and the team, and I\u2019m so excited about the things we\u2019re doing for our customers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Very few people are going to get an interview to become the CEO of Sonos. I imagine at some point you went from being the interim CEO to wanting to become the permanent CEO. What was that process like? Did you write a memo? Was there a pitch deck? What were the steps?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah, so there were a couple of pitch moments that the board asked me, completely reasonably, to engage in the process of applying for the job in the same way that all of the other talented candidates that they spoke to engaged. And so I took a personality test.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Wait, you did?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>With the letters?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Like an ENTJ or whatever?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Oh, yeah. One of the letter things, sure. They wanted to know what they were getting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Do they know that that is basically just like astrology? Someone should tell them. <\/strong><strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">You know what? Yep, yep. I presented my vision for the company more than once, and I had the incredible advantage of being inside the four walls of the company and deeply understanding what was working and what wasn\u2019t, and the things that we needed to do to get to this next chapter. It was a period of intense, intense work for me and everybody around me at the company, and more than a little anxiety about how it was going to turn out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It was so fun, though, to get the call and then to just immediately be able to pivot at least a fraction of the work from the entirely tactical to the much more strategic, to begin to talk about what kind of company we are going to build together in this next chapter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>When it was announced that you would become the permanent CEO, even when you were the interim CEO, my reaction was, \u201cOh, this makes sense.\u201d To use a football analogy, football teams hire defensive head coaches and offensive head coaches, and they come from one side of the ball or the other. It was just obvious: \u201cOh, this company needs a software CEO, and Tom is a software guy.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>You\u2019re describing a situation where obviously it\u2019s both. You\u2019ve got hardware and software together, but that was the light that went off in my head \u2014 \u201cOh, this is a software person coming in to fix a big software problem.\u201d Is that how you saw it initially?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah, my career started with selling personal computers in 1986 or something, at the original Micro Center. If you\u2019ve ever been to a Micro Center, it\u2019s one of the few remaining big-box retailers for computers. So at the original Micro Center in Columbus, Ohio, at 16 years old, I walked into the CEO\u2019s office and said, \u201cI want to work here.\u201d So from my earliest days, I was sitting with early adopters of personal computers and watching their struggles to understand the technology and put it to use in their lives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I became an engineer and a product designer out of a desire to help people learn to use these products. And that\u2019s really what\u2019s motivated me through my entire career: how do I help teams make great experiences? So while it\u2019s true that I\u2019m a software person, 35 years in the business, my identity really is as a product designer. And I\u2019d like to think that the board imagined that, yes, they needed a software person, but they needed somebody who could holistically look at the opportunity across hardware and software and help the team get there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>You appear to be through it now. There\u2019s a big stack of announcements here, including MCP integration. I\u2019ve got a lot of questions about all that. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>When you became the permanent CEO 18 months ago, you said you immediately shifted strategy. What brought that into focus for you? \u201cOh, this is actually a software platform with hardware components\u201d? Was that instinct? Was it research? Was it, \u201cI\u2019m getting through this app process, and that is becoming revealed to me\u201d? How did that work?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think by disposition I\u2019m a fairly right-brained person, and I have this intuitive feeling \u2014 creative, or whatever the words are, not as quantitative. But my first job out of college was at Apple, and I think even from the early days when I was there, we talked about the intersection of the arts and humanities and the sciences.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think one lesson of my career has been that you really do have an obligation to bring both a quant and a qual assessment to most things that pass your desk. So the development of our strategy was very much like that. Yes, there was an intuitive sense about what the right answer for Sonos was that was built up from my experience as a customer by observing our customers and talking to them through the years. A piece of that is a perspective about where the puck is going, of course.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But I do have access to piles and piles and piles of data about how our products behave in the real world, how our customers interact with them, what they use, what they don\u2019t use, and lots of people around me in the organization who can bring that quantitative framing. I think one advantage I had over other CEO candidates was that I could bring some of that horsepower to bear on the story that I shared with the board about my vision for the future of the company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>You\u2019ve made some changes. It\u2019s time for the <\/strong><strong><em>Decoder<\/em><\/strong><strong> questions. You have restructured the company. There have been a few rounds of layoffs. How big is Sonos today?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">We\u2019re about 1,500 people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>And how is that structured?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So the company that I stepped into was divided into business units. We had a team that was focused on home. We had a team that was focused on the professional opportunity, a team that was focused on home theater, and so on. While there\u2019s something to be said for P&amp;L responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, there\u2019s something to be said for that approach at a certain scale. I think that my appraisal was that we were sub-scale for the inefficiencies that creep in. We have the almost guaranteed duplication of effort across the silos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">What\u2019s more, if you imagine that the product is really the system, the idea that your portables team sits far away from your home theater team, and sits far away from your plugged-in speakers team, is almost surely going to run counter to the kind of progress that you\u2019re trying to motivate. And so very quickly, within three weeks of my arrival, we reorganized the company into a functional model.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So my leadership team today, of course, has a finance organization, a legal organization, a sales organization, and a marketing organization. But the product team now shows up as represented by hardware, software, and global supply chain operations, so leaders across each of those things. And what that allows us to do is to assemble cross-functional teams, or matrix-style teams, to invest in the initiatives that are of the highest priority to our customers and to the business at any given moment. And we can flex that up and down and side to side as our needs change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">We might, for an interval, be very focused on this part of the portfolio over here, and then we might be able to move to focusing on a different corner of the portfolio. No one has to get a new boss, and people can fluidly move from these things and get new opportunities to learn. It just strikes me as a much more appropriate organizational structure for our current stage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>You\u2019re describing the shift from a divisional structure to a vastly more functional structure.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>That\u2019s Apple, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yep, sure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Everyone comes up, and there\u2019s one big product meeting.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>You obviously make a lot of software. I\u2019ve described you as a software CEO. It seems like the software industry is in a moment of existential crisis about how software is made, about what a product manager versus an engineer versus a designer do. Are you still in the classic structures of building software? Or has AI completely upended what you\u2019re doing?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">No, we\u2019re as deep in this as anyone. What\u2019s been really fun for me over the course of the last year is to watch the software engineering team go from thoughtful skepticism to pretty deep embrace, if I\u2019m honest. Some of that is on the back of just how dramatically the tools have evolved over the course of the last 12 months, certainly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think almost everyone in the industry went home at the holidays at the tail end of 2025, coming into 2026, and came back just gobsmacked by how much progress the frontier labs were making on agentic coding, and it\u2019s been a real accelerant for us. As complex as this transition is, I\u2019m really excited about being able to help our engineers navigate what\u2019s a pretty fundamental sea change in the way that this kind of infrastructure gets built, and it\u2019s fun to get to be a part of that at this moment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Did you break up the classic PM, designer, and engineer triad? Or is that still the core building block?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">We still have all three, but it blurs particularly as the designers and the product managers can be prototypers at a really high level with incredible efficiency. It\u2019s exciting to see how quickly they can communicate their ideas now in a medium that just didn\u2019t exist at all for them a year ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>We\u2019re at the turn, right? You came in, you restructured the company, you identified a new thesis for the company. Today you\u2019re here to talk about all the new news. Do you think you\u2019re through it? Do you think the existing customers have forgiven you for the app mess? Do you think the brand has been restored?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah, as we\u2019ve been saying, I think that there\u2019s the quant and there\u2019s the qual. The quant is green across the board. Performance, reliability, customer care interactions, social tone, NPS \u2014 these things are all restored to levels that we enjoyed before any of that happened.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">On the qualitative side, I love the fact that I can show up on Reddit or on social media broadly and engage with our customers and have a constructive conversation about things that they\u2019re excited that we\u2019re doing, and things where we\u2019re still disappointing an individual customer on some dimension.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think that at some level, maybe this game is never over; you\u2019re just always trying to polish off the remaining rough edges of everything that you do. So I have a real critic\u2019s eye when I look at the work that we do, and if I ever let that slip, a customer will remind me of where the work remains. And so, yes, I think in every measurable way it\u2019s behind us, but it\u2019s a \u201cnever forget\u201d chapter for the company.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>That brings me to the other <em>Decoder<\/em> question: how do you make decisions? What\u2019s your framework?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Well, I don\u2019t think you bring just one framework to every decision. So we talk about, for example, product decisions. As an idea moves through its lifecycle from its days as an early little sapling that you have to care and tend to, through final mass production for a hardware object, and out into the channels, I think how you think about [each of those] decisions is different.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So in the earliest days, I really tried to protect the creativity of the company and to not let the antibodies of doubt and critique erode an idea before it\u2019s had a chance to express itself in a way that anybody could get excited about. That means creating room for risk-taking, creativity, qualitative assessment, and prototyping before you get to the details of the business case and the hard trade-offs that you make on a journey from an idea to something you can actually ship.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But of course, as the programs roll along and they take on more and more financial investment and organizational risk, as more and more people aggregate into the product, you become, I think, just naturally much more quantitative in your analysis of the decisions. And you ask the teams to bring a really thoughtful, detailed description of the puts and takes and the risks associated with it, and you use that to help you make your decisions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But maybe on top of all of that, you just have to hire great people. I mean, you just do, and you have to put them on teams that are an appropriate size for the task at hand. I think it\u2019s going to be very, very difficult for any CEO or any leadership team to make great decisions if the people who aren\u2019t bringing the ideas themselves aren\u2019t great. So I suppose it starts with the right people in the seats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The reason I ask that question in that way is that, I think, the decision you made that is most emblematic to me of changing from a divisional structure with individual P&amp;Ls to a more functional structure, and thinking about the platform as a whole, was the decision to kill a product that I believe was called Pinewood. It was a set-top box that was going to integrate all the streaming services. This was <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/features\/2026-03-10\/sonos-new-speaker-heralds-revival-under-ceo-tom-conrad-after-app-fiasco\"><strong>well reported by former <\/strong><strong><em>Verge<\/em><\/strong><strong> reporter Chris Welch<\/strong><\/a><strong>, who\u2019s now at Bloomberg.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The thing that really struck me about that was if you had a division that was focused on soundbars, the only place that division could go was to compete with Roku. And all the reporting that we had before suggested that the soundbar division was growing because the attach rate for soundbars with new TVs is 100 percent. Everyone knows the speakers in their TVs are bad. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s a great business, and we\u2019re for sure the best product in the category.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>So if you want to grow, which is the big thing, you\u2019re going to be like, \u201cHow do we grow? And you say, \u201cWell, I got to beat Roku.\u201d And then now you\u2019re just off doing that. You came in, and you just ended that, and I thought, \u201cOh, this is not just a decision to end a product line; this is also a decision about the strategy of the company. Because if you\u2019re going to go compete with Roku, you\u2019ve got to be a different company.\u201d That\u2019s my view of it. Is that how you saw it?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Like so many things, these decisions do have more than one dimension that you evaluate. A big part of that decision, candidly, was that we were spread too thin across too many things, and I didn\u2019t believe that we could be exceptional at all of them. I wanted to return us to focus on the thing that allows us to be most differentiated in the competitive set, and that\u2019s the incredible systemness of the product, the audio experience that we can deliver, and attending to what, at the time, was a very long list of things that our customers were explicitly asking us for.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think if we were, putatively, actually working on a set-top box at that moment, another thing that I might have wondered about was whether our desire to make this particular product came from our customer or did it come from some sort of internally sourced sense of business opportunity? And I think companies get in a lot of trouble when the thing that comes first is the model and the thing that comes second is the product.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I certainly feel a sense of obligation to constantly be evaluating new business opportunities for the company, new business models for the company, sure. But I want them to always start from a place of what we really see in the market from customers. I\u2019m not sure that they were saying we want a high-end streaming box that is somehow the love child of an Apple TV and a Roku.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Although that love child\u2026 I would be very worried about that love child. Why does this product have 200GB of storage for no identifiable reason, but also shows me ads at all times? We\u2019ll set that aside. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I ask that because I want to talk to you about all the news here. The news here is a bunch of big bets. You\u2019ve got Sonos 27. That is the new name of what you were calling an audio operating system that has something in it called Sonos Fabric. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Boy, I know you know me. I\u2019m ready to go on all these names and all these ideas. In there, somewhere, is MCP support. There\u2019s a big idea about assistants that I want to talk about. You\u2019re cashing some chips, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>You\u2019re saying, \u201dOkay, here\u2019s a big new idea. Trust us. We\u2019re going to get it right this time.\u201d You\u2019re ready for it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah, I feel very ready. We\u2019ve spent the last year building the new products that tell the story of this next chapter of the company. We\u2019re really excited, not just about their capabilities, but how we\u2019re going to share them with the world and how we\u2019re going to enter a period of co-creation with our customers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">We\u2019ve recently done that with some of the app enhancements that we\u2019ve been rolling out. We\u2019ve rolled out a mechanism that allows our customers to opt into them explicitly and talk to us about what they see in their own homes, and it\u2019s just been such a delightful chapter of engagement with the community that I think we really lacked for a while. So yeah, I feel very ready.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Can I talk about it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Yeah, let\u2019s get into it. Sonos 27 and Sonos Fabric, what are these things? Explain to people what\u2019s going on here.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So 100 percent hardware, 100 percent software. For 20 years, we\u2019ve given all of our hardware objects names: Roam, Arc, Beam, Ace, Era. But we\u2019ve never named the software platform \u2014 the thing that takes these collections of products and creates a consistent whole. So in some ways, the big news that we\u2019re sharing right now is that the software platform has a name called Sonos 27, and it has a bunch of promises that it makes to customers in its nuts and bolts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s an ecosystem platform that allows a huge heterogeneous world of services to come together in your home. It\u2019s a system that has a deep technological layer that tunes the audio for every part of your household through a system we call Trueplay. It\u2019s fundamentally built on a kind of fabric that brings all of the products together into a cohesive whole. And architecturally, it\u2019s one of the things that\u2019s really, really unique about what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Our products in your home really find each other on the local network and create something that is truly where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And it\u2019s what unlocks so much of the magical experiences that we\u2019ve delivered through the years. We\u2019re about to announce some exciting new capabilities for Sonos Fabric and point a vector into the future of more to come.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Finally, we have these control and engagement services: app, voice, web. You mentioned MCP, which is a new dimension that we\u2019re adding. We also have an entirely new voice assistant experience. And so we\u2019re doing all of that across the software ecosystem, and we\u2019re even giving a little bit of a preview of a capability that we\u2019re calling Custom Agents, which is multi-tenancy inside of the platform to allow modern voice assistants to live side by side and interact with one another on the platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So we\u2019re doing all of that, and we have some great new hardware too. We\u2019ve got a brand new amazing soundbar and an amazing set of new headphones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The Beam Ultra is the new soundbar, and I think it\u2019s 7.1.2.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yep.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>This is very nerdy, but to me it represents the fact that Atmos is totally mainstream now at this price point.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah, totally.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>That might be an entirely different home theater podcast. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I can\u2019t wait for you to hear it, honestly. Obviously, I\u2019m biased and consider the source, but it sounds amazing. People who have heard it just can\u2019t stop talking about how great this little soundbar sounds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Honestly, I should quit doing this and just do home theater podcasts. Where does my heart truly lie? It\u2019s that. It\u2019s just doing that.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">[Laughs] I\u2019m down. Anytime.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>We should do it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">If you need a co-host, we should do it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Look, I just <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/valueelectronics.com\/tv-projector-and-headphone-shootout-evaluation-events\/\"><strong>judged the TV shootout, and Sony lost<\/strong><\/a><strong>. It\u2019s a big deal. There\u2019s a lot going on in that world. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Tell me about the idea of naming the operating system Sonos 27. It\u2019s obviously the middle of 2026. It obviously tracks Apple\u2019s naming scheme. This very much implies there\u2019ll be a Sonos 28 one year from now, in August of 2027. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It does. I think from the beginning we knew that we wanted to give it a name, and we knew that we wanted the name to be able to express this idea that Sonos does evolve. And for many, many years, that evolution was to the great benefit of our customers. We had lossless audio for Apple. We had high-fidelity audio for Spotify. We had AirPlay. We had Alexa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Through the years, we\u2019ve just over and over and over again expanded the capability of the products that were already in our customers\u2019 homes, and we didn\u2019t have a way of talking about it at all. So we wanted to give it a name. We wanted people to understand that it improved over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So as we started thinking about, \u201cWell, how do you really do that?\u201d I mean, the first thing they came to was like, \u201cGosh, we already have \u2018OS\u2019 right in the name of the company.\u201d So to try to brand some entirely new thing felt like a self-own, and so we pretty quickly reverted to this idea that the product is 100 percent hardware and 100 percent software. The product is Sonos, not Arc. Maybe the OS2 is called Sonos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">And then it\u2019s like, \u201cWell, what companion moniker can we give it to drive that idea home?\u201d Obviously we talked about version numbers and any number of other things, but we decided that we\u2019d like to take advantage of this. Once a year, we\u2019ll stand up in front of our audience and tell them about how the platform is evolving, and using the year as a descriptor for that was a better mechanism than almost anything else that was available to us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Those software cycles, yearly big releases\u2026 Apple is basically the only company that sticks to it. Even if it doesn\u2019t do it, it announces all the features, and then they slowly dribble them out over the course of the year as they come into focus. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Again, I have a lot of questions about the nature of software development in 2027, but the idea that there\u2019s one monolithic release once a year \u2014 the industry\u2019s gotten away from that. Is that your idea, or are you going to do something different?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">No, no, no. Fortunately, the industry has gotten away from that, and our intention is to have a moment where we can tell the story of the operating system roadmap for the next six or 10 months. As you\u2019ll see, even in this moment, the things that we\u2019re announcing \u2014 many of them will be available in what we\u2019re calling early access, which is the chance for us to put them out into the product as opt-ins for our customers. That way, we can do the perspective collecting, real-world data collecting sort of work. All of these products will continue to evolve through the year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Frankly, I think as we go into the event, we will talk about all of this. I know that I\u2019m going to get questions from customers and observers like, \u201cWhat about this feature?\u201d I think really the answer is just going to be like, \u201cWe know the stuff.\u201d There\u2019s very little that you can say, \u201cHey, someone should do this,\u201d that isn\u2019t on our list.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So to be able to say, \u201cLook, part of what we\u2019re communicating with the 27 of it all is that this stuff will come in 2027, and if it doesn\u2019t, it\u2019ll come in 2028 or beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>One of the big ideas here is obviously that this is an operating system that addresses a bunch of hardware in your home. That thing mostly looks like speakers, but some of it is connected to your TVs. You\u2019ve got command and control. You\u2019ve got other assistants, which I want to talk about, and that operating system should gain more capabilities over time. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>What does the far version of that look like? Is it just that there will be an ambient assistant in your house that is addressing the fabric through MCP? Is it that you\u2019ll interoperate with other speakers that might be in the house? What does the biggest vision of this look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I mean, I think in some ways you\u2019ll have to stay tuned to see where we take this, but I\u2019ll start with this: I think that every home deserves this infrastructure. I think sound is an incredible mood stabilizer, if you like. Take the audio track out of your favorite movie or television show, and so much of the life comes out of it. And I think having an out-loud audio experience in your home is something that everybody should enjoy. So part of the big picture is we want to spread this far and wide and make it accessible to everyone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">A running joke about the first generation of assistants is that they\u2019ve ended up being for timers. I think you really do, when you\u2019re building out this next generation of voice-centric experiences, have to look at not just what the technology can do, but also what the customer wants. And one of the new capabilities in Sonos 27 is our new voice assistant.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Our voice assistant is built on modern generative technology, but it\u2019s really inspired by what people tell us that they like to see in the home. I\u2019ll tell you, the killer app of the assistant is that they just want to be able to talk to it like a normal person, full stop. With the first-generation assistants, you just had to guess what to say every time, and even then maybe it took two or three attempts to get there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s such a game changer to be able to say, \u201cPlay that album I loved in college, the one with the Cocteau Twins singer. I think the song ended up as the theme song for that show. It was on Fox. It was about the curmudgeonly Doctor House\u2026 It\u2019s \u2018Teardrop\u2019 by Massive Attack.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I know. They <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/screenrant.com\/house-md-intro-songs-different-change-streaming-explainer\/\"><strong>took it off the [streaming version of <\/strong><strong><em>House<\/em><\/strong><strong>]<\/strong><\/a><strong>. It\u2019s sad.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It is. It is. So that\u2019s job one, if you like. The first-generation assistants didn\u2019t do it at all. Sonos Voice in the new OS is exceptional at this. So that\u2019s meeting the customer where they are.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">What else should they say? Well, they say a little bit about what I would call mood and ambiance. So lighting. Let\u2019s bring lighting into the environment so that you can express a scene through both sound and light.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">My wife and I are constantly settling little bets in the kitchen: \u201cWhat was this thing called? Who is that actor?\u201d They do want comprehensive world knowledge. They want to get an answer to the kid\u2019s homework assignment or whatever, and so these agents do need to be able to hand off to comprehensive frontier models to get perspectives on the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">In some instances, those perspectives allow them to use the frontier model to manipulate the audio environment to play some music that people are talking about on TikTok and pick some stuff that sounds like the shoegaze music that I liked when I was in college. We can leverage the power of a frontier model to understand what\u2019s being talked about on TikTok to sort that against my musical preferences, and deliver it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I guess while we\u2019re enumerating what I think a modern voice assistant has to do, it has to be fast, it has to be reliable, and it has to be responsible and affordable to run. I do think that customers want this as a fundamental capability of a product like Sonos, and we built an architecture that allows us to deliver it to every one of our customers as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There\u2019s a lot of big <\/strong><strong><em>Decoder<\/em><\/strong><strong>, big <\/strong><strong><em>Verge<\/em><\/strong><strong> ideas in all of there, all the way down to where does the compute live? Where is the computer in your house supposed to be? You\u2019re describing a lot of command and control. There\u2019s integration with smart home stuff. I think it\u2019s a Lutron partnership you have now.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>But there\u2019s an infinite number of smart light switches that might help you control your lighting. Your company is part of the Matter standard, but you don\u2019t actually enable Matter on Sonos speakers. I think <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2025\/1\/2\/24332848\/speakers-matter-smart-home-apple-google-amazon-legato\"><strong>our reporting from the wonderful Jenn Tuohy<\/strong><\/a><strong>, as our smart home reporter, has suggested that you don\u2019t think it\u2019s ready. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>This is a lot of stacked problems. I\u2019m just going to read your press release to you. It says, \u201cSonos 27 MCP allows you to connect any outside AI assistant or agent to your system, including ChatGPT.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Well, I\u2019m a customer, and I\u2019ll tell you that the one that I want to use is Gemini for Home, Google\u2019s assistant, and that\u2019s been broken on Sonos for ages <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/legal\/litigation\/sonos-wins-ruling-revive-us-patent-case-against-google-2025-08-28\/\"><strong>because of an ongoing lawsuit<\/strong><\/a><strong>. Is that fixed? Is Google on your list? Because there\u2019s a lot of competitive dimension here.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So in many ways we have a strong relationship with Google to this day, despite the lawsuit. YouTube Music is one of the most-listened-to music services on the platform. We do have a long history of a first-generation Google Assistant on many of our products. We\u2019d love to continue to work with them on all of these things, and those conversations continue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I guess I\u2019m just going to push on this idea of connecting any AI assistant or agent. There are two big ones. There\u2019s Alexa, and there\u2019s Google. You might be in third place. Siri exists. Those are the ones, right? Maybe there\u2019s going to be a ChatGPT product in the future.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Well, listen. I want to tease apart two different things.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Sure.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Let\u2019s talk about command and control of the Sonos system through external agentic interfaces, just to use every buzzword. What I really mean is that we think there\u2019s a lot of utility in showing up inside of ChatGPT on the web, on your phone, on the desktop in the same way that Slack or your calendar shows up in those environments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So with Sonos 27 MCP, we\u2019ll show up in the directory of connectable services in all of those environments: in Gemini, in Claude, in ChatGPT, in Grok. By connecting that tool into your experience, however you access it, you\u2019ll be able to summon Sonos. So maybe you\u2019re working on something, and you want some music to play; you can just tell Claude to make it play or just tell Gemini to make it play from the desktop or mobile surface that you\u2019re sitting in front of.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s a pretty powerful building block as we see these OpenClaw-style agentic, proactive, asynchronous agents evolve. Now they have access to Sonos in a supportable way. There\u2019s been a bunch of hack MCPs and CLIs for Sonos around, and a lot of reporting about how they\u2019re among the most utilized examples for these things. We\u2019re excited to officially support such a thing. As much as fun it is to see the mainstream use cases, I\u2019m very excited to see what hobbyists are going to do with Sonos MCP.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So let\u2019s now talk about on-device, though. So we\u2019ve been working closely with Amazon for some time to bring Alexa Plus to our platform. That work continues. I\u2019m excited about it. We don\u2019t have anything to announce today, but we\u2019ve had a long and really successful relationship with Amazon through the years. Panos was on the board with me for many of our years at Sonos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>By the way, just so people know, that\u2019s Panos Panay, <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/go.skimresources.com\/?id=1025X1701640&amp;xs=1&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fgoogle.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dpanos%2Bpanay%2Bthe%2Bverge%2Bdecodefr%26oq%3Dpanos%2Bpanay%2Bthe%2Bverge%2Bdecodefr%26gs_lcrp%3DEgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQLhiABDINCAIQLhivARjHARiABDIHCAMQLhiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQLhiABDIHCAcQABiABDIHCAgQABiABNIBCDIwMjVqMGo3qAIAsAIA%26sourceid%3Dchrome%26source%3Dchrome.ob%26ie%3DUTF-8\" rel=\"sponsored\"><strong>who now runs hardware and Alexa at Amazon<\/strong><\/a><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s right, that\u2019s right. He\u2019s a friend of the show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Yes. Panos and I are buds. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But one thing we\u2019ve demonstrated is something we call Sonos Custom Agents, which lets you take any of these inference engines \u2014 the Anthropic engine, the OpenAI engine, the Gemini engine, the Grok engine \u2014 and invoke it from Sonos. You\u2019ll be able to give it a unique voice, give it a name, and give it a context that has it show up in a particular way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So imagine that you\u2019d like to have a personality that lives inside of Sonos, and it\u2019s the John Cusack character from <em>High Fidelity<\/em>, an opinionated record store geek who is interested in subtly shading your perspectives in music, but also making recommendations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">You\u2019ll be able to go in and set up a custom agent in Sonos that says, \u201cLet\u2019s use OpenAI inference. Let\u2019s use this voice I pick, and let\u2019s give it this personality, and let\u2019s have it live alongside an agent that\u2019s powered by Anthropic inference that is going to give me advice on cooking. And let\u2019s do another one that is only interested in connecting me with opportunities to see live music.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">All of these tools will be able to show up inside of Sonos, invoked by the name you give it, like, \u201cHey, Sonos, connect me to the curator,\u201d and talk to you only about that topic, have a point of view, and be able to access the Sonos context so that they can hand off from one to the other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It\u2019s super fun. It\u2019s super creative. It lets our customers become participants in the Sonos platform. We\u2019re just showing it off as a technology preview because there are still a lot of details to work out here, but it\u2019s a lot of fun to play with in the lab.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Let me bring some of these ideas together. There\u2019s the idea that there\u2019s external command and control. I have an Echo Dot, and I say, \u201cTurn on the Sonos,\u201d and it just does that.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Then there\u2019s the idea that there\u2019s the assistant that lives on your device that is either the Sonos voice assistant or maybe you\u2019re going to keep working with Amazon and Alexa+ being there. And then we\u2019re going to make new custom ones out of building blocks that are enabled in lots of different ways.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>When I asked where the computer is, this is, to me, the big question: where does all this ambient agentic AI actually live? Where does it have control? Is it going to happen locally? Are we sending everything to the cloud? <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Somewhere in your home, if you\u2019re going to control lights, music, and everything else, there needs to be some logic happening in your home. There are a lot of standards to do that. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. Some of them have names that connect directly to the word fabric, like Thread.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Sure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There\u2019s a lot going on here in terms of just the names and schemes of what could happen. Where do you see this view? Who is your competition here? <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Is it that Apple is going to launch a new HomePod with an AI-enabled Siri, and they already have a HomeKit, which is a pretty well-built and pretty popular smart home platform? Is it, \u201cWell, OpenAI is going to have a hardware device, and maybe their first one\u2019s going to be in the home, and you need to stave that off and make sure people are talking directly to you, and you have the customer relationship\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>That seems not only undeveloped, but even the foundations of how you build the products \u2014 like Matter and smart home standards \u2014 are messy and political in very specific ways. So how do you see the competition, victory, and success there? And then how do you solve just the capability gap that every other company has run into?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So one thing that I\u2019m reminded of in this moment is that we, as an industry, have these platform shifts that unlock opportunities for companies who get lucky on timing. For example, the original dot-com era was really powered by Oracle and Sun Solaris boxes and data centers that you owned and operated yourself. We then went through a chapter where the infrastructure became Linux and open source for your data tier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Of course, we\u2019ve had this huge long run of cloud infrastructure. I think that if you\u2019re a company that builds your stack on Solaris and Oracle, it\u2019s really that there\u2019s an opportunity for a company to come along and build a stack on Linux and Postgres in that moment and suddenly find efficiencies that are very, very hard for you to claim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think something very similar is happening in voice assistants. When I hear you talk on the show about your experience with voice assistants that are going through the transition from first generation to second generation, it feels to me like so much of the challenge there is about how we drag along all of the committed relationships that we have for the internet-connected toaster, back massager, and all of the things that are connected into those existing historical ecosystems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Honestly, even in the world of AI, with just how much has changed in the last couple of years underneath the companies as they\u2019re building out their answers here, it really feels to me like we are stepping into a moment where agentic tool use powered by protocols, like MCP, is going to disintermediate a lot of that stuff that you\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think that in the immediate term, we\u2019re really excited about what we can do in the use cases that our customers are telling us they care about. Give me mood and audio in the home. We have great solutions for that today. And I think we can take advantage of this shift to a truly next-generation architecture without the baggage of a decade of internet-connected light switches from 17 different protocols with 17 different hubs in the closet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Well, I mean, part of the opportunity there is that you don\u2019t have a big voice assistant. I don\u2019t think the current Sonos voice assistant is at the scale of Alexa or Google Assistant. I\u2019m just guessing. They do have that problem. The light switches in my house, they\u2019re in the walls. They\u2019re going to be there. That Lutron hub is there. It\u2019s not great. However, Lutron is the best one. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">It is. It is the best one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There\u2019s a box in my house, and there are a lot of those little weird little boxes in my house because I have a smart home, and all of those dependencies exist for those platforms for reasons. If you show up and say, \u201cUse my voice assistant instead,\u201d and it can\u2019t operate all of the lights, well, I\u2019m just going to fall back to Amazon, or I\u2019m going to fall back to Google. They know it, and they know they can\u2019t break those things. Panos and I have talked about it a lot, actually in the context of Alexa Plus. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The promise of AI, at least from my very abstract vantage point, is, boy, I should not care about any of this. There\u2019s a network in my house. There are lots of devices on that network. They have some access points on that network, and maybe they\u2019re API-driven access points, maybe they\u2019re MCP-driven. It should not matter. There\u2019s just a bunch of devices in my network that you can control somehow, and this all-seeing robot that is going to replace every job in America should be able to traverse my network and turn on the lights without any help. That\u2019s what it should do.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Some of the <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/openai-founder-andrej-karpathy-chores-dobby-ai-claw-2026-3\"><strong>very first big vibe coding shockwaves<\/strong><\/a><strong> were AI researchers, bleeding-edge AI researchers, being like, \u201cI figured out how to control my shades. They walked through my network, and the shades go up and down now,\u201d right? We\u2019re not there at the consumer level. The promise is not there. I\u2019m still here talking to you about Matter, Thread, HomeKit, and whether or not Google Assistant can control my Sonos Amp, which, by the way, it can\u2019t, and that is my one ticket to you that I didn\u2019t submit on Threads. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>That\u2019s the promise, but the gap to that seems really, really huge. Are you able to close it? Is that the opportunity?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think we\u2019re just still in the Apple II days of the home automation space. So while there is, as you point out, this incredible, wild, heterogeneous world of different light switch controllers, I think when you talk to mainstream consumers about their homes, they\u2019re not there yet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I do think that because of the profound technological step function of agentic control of these kinds of services and things like tool use, as the consumer catches up with the industry\u2019s ambition to solve these problems, new technological solutions will emerge. I\u2019m really excited about how we\u2019re positioned to ride that transition and not be encumbered by the decade of early adopter internet-connected light switches.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>What are you going to do about the light switches that are already in the walls?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I just don\u2019t think that there\u2019s enough of them to matter in the final answer. Of course, Lutron\u2019s a great partner, and they do a great job with this.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>They do. I mean, we have them. We\u2019ve got all kinds of light switches. We mostly have Lutron ones. But that\u2019s my question. The first natural customer for something like what you\u2019re describing is somebody who is already using these products in some way. If you show up to my house and there\u2019s no Matter support or whatever, I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, I can\u2019t use it.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Is it though, or is it more like the difference between the people that were adopting Creative Labs MP3 players before the iPod came along?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Sure<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Was the iPod really for those people, or was it for people that had that problem but were nowhere near the people that had been early adopters? Or was the iPhone for people that were using Windows CE, or was it for people that were using flip phones who were ready for the transition? I think we\u2019re making-<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Is that the idea here \u201ciPhone for smart home control\u201d or \u201ciPhone for audio in the home\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The turn there that I think is really interesting is: who are you going to talk to? Where is the computer? What is the computer? You\u2019re describing a situation where if you want music, you\u2019re going to talk to Sonos. But you also have a general-purpose assistant like Claude or ChatGPT, and they can talk to Sonos, too.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It\u2019s unclear to me \u2014 and it may be one of the most fascinating questions at this moment in tech \u2014 where the interface goes. Are we all going to have one chatbot that does everything, and all the demand is aggregated there, and OpenAI becomes more powerful than ever? Or are we going to have lots and lots of assistants that we address in lots and lots of different ways? <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>It seems like your bet is Sonos will have a personality in your home, maybe multiple personalities in your home, and customers will address that, and all the other stuff will go somewhere else.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">For 20 years, we\u2019ve found a lot of success around the idea of embracing every dimension of the problem. Yes, there\u2019s an app, but you\u2019re welcome to engage with us through AirPlay or Spotify Connect. Yes, we have a voice assistant that lives side by side with Alexa. Yes, we have proprietary mesh, but it integrates with Bluetooth and even line-in. I think we bet that we\u2019re of a size and scale that allows us to both be nimble and react to these changes, but also have enough horsepower to keep up technologically with what the best in the category are doing. So I think some of this just plays out on the field.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Just one last idea, since you said it a couple of times, this question about where the compute lives. I think one incredibly powerful opportunity for Sonos is that we do place compute in millions and millions of homes. People don\u2019t think of them as computers often, but they are. They create a seamless experience that is really the integration of a set of cloud services and local services in a way that looks like just one surface area to the customer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think that the answer to your questions, \u201cDoes this live in the cloud? Does this live in the home? Does this live in a box?\u201d is yes. I think we\u2019re pretty uniquely situated to take advantage of an architecture where it\u2019s not cloud-only, it\u2019s not home-only, but it\u2019s an integrated system that combines all of that together. And at the end of the day, that is what Sonos 27 is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Just to make that really reductive, when I say \u201cwhere is the computer\u201d in the home context, what I mean is maybe in the \u201890s to early 2000s, there was a vision that we would all have home servers in our basements, and they would do all the logic of our home. They would have all the storage, and Microsoft would sell you a Windows home server in the basement and a Windows Media Center in the living room, and you and I probably both watched all of those Bill Gates keynotes at CES. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>None of that really ever came to pass. Instead, we put a lot of cheap computers near all the TVs, and they connected to cloud services, and they\u2019re basically just running web browsers, as you well know. That is a very different version of what needed to happen and how the market played out.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>In the smart home, I\u2019ve got a bunch of automations in my house. When the garage is open, the lights turn on, and other stuff happens. At night, the doors all lock if they\u2019re not locked. That logic has to live somewhere. My perspective on it is that it should live in my house. If the internet goes down, the lights should still turn on. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>This is not anything to do with big AI integrations or the new MCP way to address the Sonos system. Those are big ideas, and I\u2019m just insistently dragging you back down into the dirt of: if the internet goes out, are the lights still going to turn on?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">You don\u2019t want to be the partner that puts in the internet-connected light switches that don\u2019t work when the internet is down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>But it\u2019s not just the internet-connected light switches; it\u2019s the logic of making it all work together.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I understand. Yeah, fair. Here\u2019s what I\u2019ll say about that. For 40 years now, we\u2019ve been talking about technology for the home, starting with the personal computer, which is supposed to be the center of the technological household, but we didn\u2019t really get that. We got laptops that people mostly use at work and use a bit at home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Then we got mobile, and mobile is supposed to be the thing that you engage with when you leave your house on your way to work. Of course, the fundamental media of mobile is so addicting that it\u2019s all-consuming. We use it at work, we use it at home \u2014 we use it all the time. But my observation about our use of it in the home is that nobody loves it. No spouse has ever said, \u201cI wish my husband was on his phone more. I wish my kid used their iPad more,\u201d and so we\u2019re looking for ways to get beyond that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">To your point, the other compute that\u2019s in the home, like I said, is the set-top box, which is largely just a web browser to a bunch of services that live in the cloud. I think it\u2019s pretty interesting, actually, that in 17 million homes Sonos is an actual mesh of compute in your house with real horsepower, real memory, real CPU, real capability, a real operating system \u2014 all just waiting to be the container for some of the kinds of things you\u2019re talking about. So it\u2019s super interesting. We\u2019ll figure it out over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I feel like you\u2019re this close to being like, \u201cAnd then the Teslas will be a data center.\u201d There\u2019s something there that is maybe the line. Actually, I want to talk about that. I actually want to push on that a little bit. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>The initial Sonos innovation 100 years ago, when the company started, was, \u201cOh, we can build a mesh network. We can do wireless audio at scale. We can synchronize the latency of all the speakers so it sounds like the same music playing at the same time.\u201d This was a lot of big engineering back in the day. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Still, I mean, candidly, still. A lot of what our software team does day in and day out is extend and maintain that infrastructure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There are features you\u2019re announcing here as part of Sonos Fabric that I think are interesting. If you have surrounds, you can just place them, and they\u2019ll figure out that they\u2019re surrounds and immediately start being the surround speakers in a home theater. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>There\u2019s just a lot of potential, as you\u2019re describing, in the notion that, \u201cOh, there\u2019s a big network of small computers in my house that can come together and do things you would not expect.\u201d Is your focus that they will always do audio things? Or is it the focus that they will have many more capabilities?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think any thoughtful product leader is going to tell you the focus is an important part of success. I do feel like there\u2019s so much interesting work for us to do around creating an audio system that sets the mood for your home that I don\u2019t want us to take our eye off of that opportunity. We are doing some really exciting things in Sonos Fabric and Sonos 27 that we should talk about, that get to some of the work that you\u2019re describing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">But certainly in the moments where you allow yourself to think about what the company is in five years and what it will be in 10 years, you can\u2019t help but interrogate what the opportunity is for a mesh \u2014 a fabric of compute that lives in the home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I want to end by talking about headphones really quickly. We just had the CEO of Bose on. She and I had a <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/975732\/bose-ceo-lila-snyder-ai-wearables-licensing-headphones-audio\"><strong>pretty searching conversation about what happens to the headphone market<\/strong><\/a><strong> in the time of AI wearables. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>My fear, my anxiety, about audio is always that consumers will always pick convenience over quality. It\u2019s just the history of the&#8230; I\u2019ve got a set of AirPods on this desk, and they don\u2019t sound great, but boy, are they convenient. And that\u2019s just the way it goes. It has always been what the market has demanded: convenience over quality.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>We\u2019re going to enter a time when Apple puts cameras on AirPods, and you can talk to them with Siri. When Google and Samsung ship very similar products, there\u2019s undoubtedly going to be a flood of AI hardware startups that want to put something in your ears or in your body in some way. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>You are in the headphone market. You\u2019re talking a lot about AI; you\u2019re talking a lot about Fabric. That seems like a cataclysm coming for headphones. The same way that the removal of the headphone jack was a cataclysm in the headphone market, this seems like the next one. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>How are you preparing for that? Do you think there\u2019s going to be a range of voice assistants on headphones, or do you think what you would call the first-party vendors are going to just grab more and more of that share?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Before we jump to the hypotheticals about where headphones are, can I tell you a little bit about the new headphones?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Yeah, of course.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">All right. So one of the things that you get from entering a new market is the opportunity to build something and put it in customers\u2019 homes and learn a lot about what matters and what doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So we launched Sonos Ace two years ago. I think measured against any of the other premium over-the-ear noise-canceling headphones in the market, they\u2019re a great product. They\u2019ve got great reviews; they have great noise cancelling. They\u2019re super comfortable, and they look great. We\u2019re really proud of the product, but they weren\u2019t thoughtfully integrated into the Sonos ecosystem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I mean, at launch you could swap to one of our soundbars, not even all of our soundbars. I think it was the most visible expression of the missed opportunity of that moment for the company to always remember that the products that we make are part of the Sonos system, not individual offerings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So we ended up with a great pair of headphones, but honestly, I mean, you review them all the time; there are lots of great headphones. When we set out to take all the lessons that we learned from Ace to design Ace Ultra, at the very top of that list is that we have to do the hard thing. These headphones have to be able to show up in your home as a part of the system, and the model through which you invoke your headphones has to be completely seamless and delightful.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">We built an entirely new hardware platform for Ace Ultra called Headphone Engine 2, and it unlocks this capability at the hardware level. And then in Sonos OS 27, we built virtualization so that any one of the speakers in your home can deliver the audio platform to that speaker but can also act as a proxy for your headphones, which don\u2019t have the horsepower to run the full stack \u2014 it would kill battery life, et cetera.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Now with Ace Ultra, you\u2019ll be able to link your headphones to your Sonos system, walk up to a speaker that\u2019s playing, press a button on your headphones, and the music will jump from the speaker into your headphones. No Bluetooth, no phone. You\u2019ll be able to walk around your whole house, enjoy the music, come to another speaker, press the button again, and it will jump to that speaker using some BLA location-sensing stuff that we\u2019ve developed. It\u2019s super magical. It\u2019s the one job that we had and didn\u2019t deliver on with Ace. We\u2019re really excited to get it out into the market.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Analogous to that on the home theater side is, as you mentioned, that we\u2019re making all of our portable speakers \u2014 Sonos Play, Sonos Move \u2014 capable of being rear channels for home theater. That sounds really easy. Maybe people will even be like, \u201cWhy wasn\u2019t that always possible?\u201d But to your point about the deep technology of it, the way that we achieve high-fidelity, low-latency surround experiences in the living room is by directly bonding our rear channel speakers and subwoofer to the soundbar on a proprietary network, not through your access point. So for a speaker to seamlessly hop between being part of your Sonos system as a music node and part of your Sonos system as a surround channel means that you have to do a real-time reconfiguration of that networking stack, and you have to know when to do it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">We\u2019re using accelerometers in the product to actually know that you\u2019ve picked it up and set it down in a new location. We\u2019re using Sonos\u2019 positioning system, which is ultrasonic signaling, to broadcast to the room, \u201cHey, is there a soundbar here?\u201d Ultrasonic comes back saying, \u201cI\u2019m here.\u201d They negotiate position, left and right, and distance, so that they can optimize the surround sound experience. You pick it up again, you take it back to the kitchen, and it\u2019s a regular speaker again. All happens magically, no use of the app. It\u2019s pretty cool.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Answer my question on headphones, though. This is my big worry. You\u2019ve got really cool headphones. They have a feature that no one else can ship, and Apple\u2019s going to say, \u201cLook, our new AirPods have Siri AI in them.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>You can just say, \u201cShow me what I\u2019m looking at,\u201d and a picture will be taken automatically and something will happen. We\u2019ll get over the privacy implications of that, but that\u2019s a collapse of the headphone market.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Maybe. I mean, headphones come in all kinds of form factors today: over-ear, in-ear, cuffs, wireless, wired. So I do think it\u2019s a market where people choose different form factors for different tasks. We\u2019re really focused on this personal in-the-home listening \u2014 what do you do when the baby\u2019s asleep? What do you do when you want to move the party from the kitchen to the den while you relax for the evening? We think that there\u2019s a bunch of really interesting use cases there that other people aren\u2019t paying attention to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">I think, broadly, over the course of the next couple of years, we\u2019re going to get all kinds of adventurous wackadoodle consumer electronics that are connected to this new emerging AI universe. Most of them will be a swing and a miss. Of course, we\u2019ve already seen some of those. So it\u2019s a little hard to speculate, I think, about which of these things, if any, is going to have its iPod moment or its iPhone moment or whatever.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">What do you think is going to happen?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I think we\u2019re going to see a replay of what happened when the headphone jack got taken away. The headphone jack was an open interconnect. There was a really vibrant market for all kinds of headphones, and a bunch of those companies don\u2019t exist anymore. The high-end wired headphones, for phones anyway, have mostly gone away, and you have a bunch of medium Bluetooth competitors, but the phone makers have largely taken that with first-party products. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Now, you have your products at the high end competing with really high-end noise-canceling products from Bose and Sony and whoever, and that is the airplane set. The lack of the open interconnect has really killed the vibrancy of the low and middle end of the market.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Okay, well, there\u2019s one big thing they can do to make sure the high end belongs to them, and it\u2019s to integrate AI in very specific ways directly into their operating system. We\u2019ll see how that plays out. There\u2019s also a thing that\u2019s different this time: there\u2019s a vastly more energized European regulatory environment. Who knows how this will play out?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Sure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I can\u2019t tell you, but all that stuff is a swirl, and you\u2019re a headphone maker, and it seems like different headphone makers are taking different approaches to this.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">The only counter that I might offer is that there\u2019s a lot of talk about the walled garden of the Bluetooth advantages that the platform companies have. But I would say even without the European regulators, it\u2019s notable that something like the Meta Glasses can have a reasonable, I think, commercially viable set of experiences that are principally powered by compute that lives on your phone and still deliver conversational AI that is mediated by a Bluetooth connection, admittedly behind some of the obstacles that you\u2019re describing. But those obstacles aren\u2019t so profound that clever companies aren\u2019t figuring out how to work within those constraints.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>I\u2019m very curious to see how that plays out. It doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s in focus. Again, probably because, as you say, none of the products are in focus. No one knows what a hit product here looks like, so you might as well let a thousand flowers bloom and then radically constrict the market.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Yeah, sure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Tom, I\u2019ve burned just a ton of your time. I think you can tell I could talk to you for ages and ages about all kinds of things.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Super fun.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Tell us what\u2019s next for Sonos. When does all this stuff ship?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">So I think by the time this airs, we\u2019ll have announced all of this to the world. We\u2019re having a big event in New York to share Sonos OS 27, Sonos Voice 27, and the Ace Ultra and Beam Ultra. We can\u2019t wait to get this stuff out into the world and begin to hear what our customers do with all of these exciting new products.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">Many of the software features are going to be available in early access, which will mean our customers will opt into them, be able to give us feedback, and we\u2019ll be able to observe the telemetry that comes back from their homes and make sure that we\u2019re delivering exactly the experience that we want. We\u2019re excited about the moment of co-creation that\u2019s around the corner for us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">As we talked about at the top of the hour, Sonos 27 is absolutely a nod to the fact that we intend to keep doing this until the sun burns out. There\u2019ll be Sonos 28 and 29 and 30 and beyond.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>That\u2019s great. All right, I\u2019ve got to ask you at the end: I have ceiling speakers in my kitchen. They\u2019re connected to a Sonos Amp. There\u2019s a Google Home Hub right there, and it\u2019s broken. I can\u2019t ask it to play music in the kitchen.<\/strong> <strong>When are you going to fix that for me? I\u2019m ending on tech support.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">All right. I don\u2019t know the answer, but I\u2019d love to figure it out for you. I know the right folks to call, so let\u2019s get you connected.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>We\u2019re going to have a <\/strong><strong><em>Decoder<\/em><\/strong><strong> roundtable.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">If your listeners have similar kinds of problems, we\u2019ve got great people to help them, and we always like to hear from you. You can find me on social pretty easily.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Usually I end by inviting people back, but I\u2019m saying we\u2019ve got to fix it, and then we\u2019re going to talk about what it took to fix it. That\u2019s the plan.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\">All right. Right on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><strong>Tom, this is great. Thank you so much, man.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _18mzr4ba _19wv7tc1\">This was super fun. Thank you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1044qizi _18mzr4b1 _18mzr4b0 _19wv7tc1\"><em><sub>Questions or comments? Hit us up at decoder@theverge.com. We really do read every email!<\/sub><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--block-placement _1xorkac1 _1xorkac0 duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--action-box _1044qizj _1044qiz11 _19kgta32 _19kgta30\">\n<div class=\"_19kgta35 _19kgta33\">\n<h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _19kgta36\">Decoder with Nilay Patel<\/h2>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">A podcast from <em>The Verge<\/em> about big ideas and other problems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m2 _11kb06m0 _19kgta39 _19kgta37\" href=\"https:\/\/pod.link\/decoder\"><span>SUBSCRIBE NOW!<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tly2fw0\"><span class=\"tly2fw2\"><strong>Follow topics and authors<\/strong> from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"tly2fw3\">\n<li id=\"follow-author-article_footer-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx\"><span aria-expanded=\"false\" role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q814 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89kf _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmF1dGhvclByb2ZpbGU6NjAx-article_footer\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1bw37384\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nilay Patel\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1bw37385 i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/author_profile_images\/195834\/NILAY_PATEL.0.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5 _1bw37380\">Nilay Patel<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1bw37381\">\n<div class=\"_1bw37382\">Editor-in-Chief<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/authors\/nilay-patel\">See All by <!-- -->Nilay Patel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-article_footer-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjMwNA==\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q814 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89kf _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Decoder<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjMwNA==-article_footer\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Decoder<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel\">See All <!-- -->Decoder<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-article_footer-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjEzNA==\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q814 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89kf _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Podcasts<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjEzNA==-article_footer\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Podcasts<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\">See All <!-- -->Podcasts<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-article_footer-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjI3Mg==\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q814 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89kf _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Smart Home<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjI3Mg==-article_footer\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Smart Home<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/smart-home\">See All <!-- -->Smart Home<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-article_footer-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjI0Ng==\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q814 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89kf _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Sonos<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjI0Ng==-article_footer\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Sonos<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/sonos\">See All <!-- -->Sonos<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-article_footer-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjI0Mw==\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q814 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89kf _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Speakers<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjI0Mw==-article_footer\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Speakers<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/speakers\">See All <!-- -->Speakers<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div id=\"follow-category-article_footer-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjU4\"><button aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-haspopup=\"true\"><span class=\"gnx4pm0 _1uf8q814 _19wv7tc5 _1618ekm0\"><span class=\"_1ajq89kf _1ajq89k1 _1ajq89k0\"><\/span><span class=\"_1618ekm9\">Tech<\/span><\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<aside id=\"popover-dmcyOmNhdGVnb3J5OjU4-article_footer\" style=\"position:absolute;left:0;top:0;visibility:hidden\" class=\"_1wu3rm0 _1se63890\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm1\"><button class=\"_1wu3rm3\"><title>Close<\/title><\/button><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1wu3rm5\">Tech<\/div>\n<p class=\"fv263x1\">Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.<\/p>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m1 _11kb06m0 fv263x2 _11kb06mg\"><span><title>Follow<\/title><\/span><span>Follow<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<p class=\"fv263x4\"><a class=\"fv263x5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\">See All <!-- -->Tech<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--layout--rail noh1q10 noh1q11\">\n<div class=\"noh1q12 noh1q14 noh1q18\">\n<div class=\"o1ls91w o1ls90 o1ls92i\">\n<div class=\"o1ls90 o1ls91x\" data-concert=\"medium_rectangle_variable\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"noh1q12 noh1q15 noh1q18\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--header-pattern _1044qizg noh1q17\">\n<div class=\"_75r1tr3\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--page-header bpecqn0\">\n<div class=\"bpecqni bpecqnf\">\n<h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup bpecqnn bpecqnm _19wv7tc2\">Most Popular<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"sticky-nav-trigger\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_75r1tr4\">\n<div class=\"_1qu42rq0\">\n<div class=\"_1qu42rqd _126cdc20\">Most Popular<\/div>\n<ol class=\"_1qu42rq1\">\n<li class=\"_1qu42rq4 _1qu42rq3\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/988536\/1password-dhh-linux-controversy\">\n<div class=\"_1qu42rqa _1qu42rq9\">1Password wades into a right-wing mess after funding a Linux project<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1qu42rq7 _1qu42rq6 _1044qiz11\"><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"_1qu42rq4 _1qu42rq3\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/cs\/features\/975597\/loudoun-county-virginia-data-center-backlash\">\n<div class=\"_1qu42rqa _1qu42rq9\">Is this the future of America?<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1qu42rq7 _1qu42rq6 _1044qiz11\"><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"_1qu42rq4 _1qu42rq3\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/report\/901818\/hbo-harry-potter-jk-rowling-transphobia\">\n<div class=\"_1qu42rqa _1qu42rq9\">There is no ethical consumption of HBO\u2019s Harry Potter series<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1qu42rq7 _1qu42rq6 _1044qiz11\"><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"_1qu42rq4 _1qu42rq3\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/games\/987972\/epilogue-gb-sn-operator-review-nintendo-game-boy-snes\">\n<div class=\"_1qu42rqa _1qu42rq9\">The amazing USB-C gadgets that play old Nintendo cartridges<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1qu42rq7 _1qu42rq6 _1044qiz11\"><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"_1qu42rq4 _1qu42rq3\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ai-artificial-intelligence\/987566\/ai-civilizations-opeai-hugging-face-hack\">\n<div class=\"_1qu42rqa _1qu42rq9\">The rise of AI \u2018civilizations\u2019 and the fall of corporate responsibility<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"noh1q12 noh1q18\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"o1ls92a o1ls90 o1ls92i\">\n<div class=\"o1ls90 o1ls92b\" data-concert=\"medium_rectangle_gamestop_desktop\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"o1ls926 o1ls90 o1ls92i\">\n<div class=\"o1ls90 o1ls927\" data-concert=\"connatix_right_rail\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"noh1q12 noh1q16 noh1q18\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"duet--cta--newsletter _3d9k259\">\n<div class=\"_3d9k25d\">\n<h2 class=\"_3d9k25h\">The Verge Daily<\/h2>\n<p class=\"_3d9k25i\"><span class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">A free daily digest of the news that matters most.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_3d9k25y _3d9k25z\">\n<fieldset>\n<div class=\"_3d9k2512 _3d9k2511\">\n<div class=\"_3d9k2516 _3d9k251e\">\n<div class=\"duet--cta--form-field-text ikl5me0\"><label for=\"email\" class=\"rq560b0 _7jr3wn0\">Email (required)<\/label><\/p>\n<div class=\"ikl5me1\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><button class=\"duet--cta--button _11kb06m2 _11kb06m0 _3d9k251l\" type=\"submit\"><span>Sign Up<\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n<div class=\"_3d9k251q\">\n<div class=\"_3d9k25j\">By submitting your email, you agree to our<!-- --> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.voxmedia.com\/legal\/terms-of-use\" class=\"_3d9k251p\">Terms<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.voxmedia.com\/legal\/privacy-notice\" class=\"_3d9k251p\">Privacy Notice<\/a>. <!-- -->This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google<!-- --> <a href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/privacy\" class=\"_3d9k251p\">Privacy Policy<\/a> <!-- -->and<!-- --> <a href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/terms\" class=\"_3d9k251p\">Terms of Service<\/a> <!-- -->apply.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--ad--native-ad-rail _14xz0mvb hidden noh1q18 noh1q12\" data-native-ad-id=\"container\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"visually-hidden\">\n<div class=\"dynamic-native-ad-native_ad_latest\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/\" aria-label=\"Native Ad Placement\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_14xz0mv0\">\n<div class=\"_14xz0mvc\"><span data-native-ad-id=\"preamble\" class=\"_14xz0mv8\">Advertiser Content From<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"_14xz0mvh\"><img data-native-ad-id=\"sponsored_logo\" src alt=\"Sponsor Logo\" class=\"_14xz0mvg\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"_14xz0mvj\" data-native-ad-id=\"title\">This is the title for the native ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_14xz0mvd\">\n<div class=\"_14xz0mve\"><img data-native-ad-id=\"thumbnail\" src alt=\"Sponsor thumbnail\" class=\"_14xz0mvf\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"noh1q12 noh1q18\">\n<div class=\"o1ls922 o1ls90 o1ls92i\">\n<div class=\"o1ls90 o1ls923\" data-concert=\"btf_medium_rectangle_variable\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"duet--layout--article-recirc-color-container e3czlx0\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--article-recirc e3czlx1 _1044qiz3\">\n<div class=\"e3czlx3\">\n<div class=\"e3czlx4\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--header-pattern _75r1tr2\">\n<div class=\"_75r1tr3\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--page-header bpecqn0\">\n<div class=\"bpecqnj bpecqnf\">\n<h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup bpecqno bpecqnm _19wv7tc2\">More in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\">Podcasts<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"sticky-nav-trigger\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_75r1tr4\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"_1hofmaw0\">\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"New York Governor Kathy Hochul thinks AI should be \u2018less evil\u2019\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/DCD_Hochul.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/986661\/ny-gov-kathy-hochul-ai-data-centers-ban-3d-printed-guns-flock-cameras\">New York Governor Kathy Hochul thinks AI should be \u2018less evil\u2019<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The iPhone Fold could make concerts even worse\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/VRG_VST_0828_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/986145\/m6-mac-mini-meta-settlement-gta-6-vergecast\">The iPhone Fold could make concerts even worse<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"OpenAI\u2019s executive exodus has one big winner\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/VRG_DCD_082726_site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/985332\/openai-greg-brockman-sam-altman-leader-executive-exodus\">OpenAI\u2019s executive exodus has one big winner<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"How GoFundMe became America\u2019s backup plan\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/DCD_20260824_TimCadogan.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0.027173913043484%2C0%2C99.945652173913%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/982901\/gofundme-ceo-tim-cadogan-fundraising-healthcare-medical-expenses\">How GoFundMe became America\u2019s backup plan<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Pixel 11 gets in on the digicam trend\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/VST082126_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/983288\/pixel-11-gets-in-on-the-digicam-trend\">Pixel 11 gets in on the digicam trend<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card up4voo0 _7uluu53\">\n<div class=\"up4voo7 up4voop up4vooa _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Welcome to the AI crisis in math\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/DCD_082026_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"up4voo6\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/982434\/ai-math-openai-astra-existential-crisis\">Welcome to the AI crisis in math<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1hofmaw2\">\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqjj _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"New York Governor Kathy Hochul thinks AI should be \u2018less evil\u2019\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/DCD_Hochul.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.666666666667%2C0%2C66.666666666667%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"New York Governor Kathy Hochul thinks AI should be \u2018less evil\u2019\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/DCD_Hochul.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/986661\/ny-gov-kathy-hochul-ai-data-centers-ban-3d-printed-guns-flock-cameras\">New York Governor Kathy Hochul thinks AI should be \u2018less evil\u2019<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-08-31T14:00:00+00:00\">Aug 31<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The iPhone Fold could make concerts even worse\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/VRG_VST_0828_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.666666666667%2C0%2C66.666666666667%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The iPhone Fold could make concerts even worse\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/VRG_VST_0828_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/986145\/m6-mac-mini-meta-settlement-gta-6-vergecast\">The iPhone Fold could make concerts even worse<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>Jacob Kastrenakes<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-08-28T15:26:19+00:00\">Aug 28<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"OpenAI\u2019s executive exodus has one big winner\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/VRG_DCD_082726_site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.666666666667%2C0%2C66.666666666667%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"OpenAI\u2019s executive exodus has one big winner\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/VRG_DCD_082726_site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/985332\/openai-greg-brockman-sam-altman-leader-executive-exodus\">OpenAI\u2019s executive exodus has one big winner<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-08-27T14:00:00+00:00\">Aug 27<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"How GoFundMe became America\u2019s backup plan\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/DCD_20260824_TimCadogan.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.684782608696%2C0%2C66.630434782609%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"How GoFundMe became America\u2019s backup plan\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/DCD_20260824_TimCadogan.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0.027173913043484%2C0%2C99.945652173913%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/982901\/gofundme-ceo-tim-cadogan-fundraising-healthcare-medical-expenses\">How GoFundMe became America\u2019s backup plan<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-08-24T14:00:00+00:00\">Aug 24<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Pixel 11 gets in on the digicam trend\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/VST082126_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.666666666667%2C0%2C66.666666666667%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Pixel 11 gets in on the digicam trend\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/VST082126_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/983288\/pixel-11-gets-in-on-the-digicam-trend\">Pixel 11 gets in on the digicam trend<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>Jacob Kastrenakes<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-08-21T16:27:05+00:00\">Aug 21<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj1 _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqjk _1ismqjl _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqj7 _1ismqj6 _1ismqjc _1ismqjh _1cnxcye3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Welcome to the AI crisis in math\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjf i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/DCD_082026_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=16.666666666667%2C0%2C66.666666666667%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Welcome to the AI crisis in math\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ismqjg i7ks070\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.theverge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/DCD_082026_Site.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"_1cnxcye1 _1cnxcye4\"><title>Play<\/title><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd3 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/podcast\/982434\/ai-math-openai-astra-existential-crisis\">Welcome to the AI crisis in math<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"jelpepd jelpep0\"><span><span class=\"_1g89o322 _19wv7tc5\"><span><span>Nilay Patel<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw2 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5 _1044qizs\"><time datetime=\"2026-08-20T14:00:00+00:00\">Aug 20<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--ad--native-ad-linkset _14xz0mv4 _14xz0mv5 _14xz0mva hidden\" data-native-ad-id=\"container\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"visually-hidden\">\n<div class=\"dynamic-native-ad-native_ad_linkset_link\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/\" aria-label=\"Advertisement\"><\/p>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"_14xz0mv7\"><span data-native-ad-id=\"preamble\" class=\"_14xz0mv8 _14xz0mv9\">Advertiser Content From<\/span><\/p>\n<div><img data-native-ad-id=\"logo\" src alt=\"Sponsor Logo\" class=\"_14xz0mvg\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"_14xz0mvj\" data-native-ad-id=\"title\">This is the title for the native ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"e3czlx6\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--header-pattern _75r1tr2\">\n<div class=\"_75r1tr3\">\n<div class=\"duet--layout--page-header bpecqn0\">\n<div class=\"bpecqnj bpecqnf\">\n<h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup bpecqno bpecqnm _19wv7tc2\">Top Stories<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"sticky-nav-trigger\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"_75r1tr4\">\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqjj _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"jelpep4 jelpep0\"><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw8 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5\"><time datetime=\"2026-09-03T07:30:00+00:00\">7:30 AM UTC<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/988265\/anker-sleep-earbuds-4-pro-price-date-specs\">Anker put a display on the case of its new sleepbuds<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"jelpep4 jelpep0\"><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw8 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5\"><time datetime=\"2026-09-02T10:00:01+00:00\">Sep 2<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/cs\/features\/975597\/loudoun-county-virginia-data-center-backlash\">Is this the future of America?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"jelpep4 jelpep0\"><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw8 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5\"><time datetime=\"2026-09-03T08:00:00+00:00\">8:00 AM UTC<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/988248\/belkin-ultracharge-pro-boostsolid-cell-power-bank-battery-safer\">Belkin introduces its first longer-lasting semi-solid-state power banks<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--content-cards--content-card _1ismqj0 _7uluu53 _1ismqjk _1ismqjl _1ismqj5\">\n<div class=\"_1ismqji\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div class>\n<div class=\"jelpep4 jelpep0\"><span class=\"duet--article--timestamp g4xafw8 g4xafw0 _19wv7tc5\"><time datetime=\"2026-09-03T15:37:59+00:00\">10 minutes ago<\/time><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"_19wv7tc9 _1d4s5vd7 _1d4s5vd0\"><a class=\"_7uluu50 _7uluu54 _7uluu55\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/tech\/986178\/ifa-2026-the-biggest-tech-and-gadget-announcements\">IFA 2026: the biggest tech and gadget announcements<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/main><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Podcasts Close Podcasts Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowFollow See All Podcasts Tech Close Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowFollow See All Tech Decoder Close Decoder Posts from this topic will be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,250],"class_list":["post-2126361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-theverge-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2126361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2126361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2126361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2126361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}