Wall Street is now hiring for gut instinct.
Crypto joins the S&P 500, Apple ditches Google, and junior bankers are getting retrained to be… human.
We used to be rewarded for following the map.
Now the map’s outdated and the reward is going to those shipping faster than the system can retrain them.
Solo founders hiring AI agents.
Codex turning ideas into apps.
Coinbase joining the S&P.
Junior bankers being trained for their… gut instinct?
Let’s get into what moved this week across finance, AI, and the future of work.
Firecrawl’s $1M Job Hunt… For AI Agents.
Y Combinator-backed startup Firecrawl is hiring.
But they’re not looking for employees.
With a $1 million hiring budget, they’re offering $5,000/month retainers for AI agents to fill roles like junior developer, content creator, and customer support rep.
One bot will be tasked with writing SEO content, publishing it, tracking its own engagement, and improving based on feedback.
Another will triage GitHub issues and contribute code in Go.
And yes, these are real jobs posted on the real YC job board.
While this may read as a Black Mirror cold open, the $1 million hiring budget isn’t just for agents. Firecrawl will also hire for the humans who build and manage them.
Their founder calls it the future of work: not man vs machine, but human operators overseeing teams of AI agents that ship content, write code, and handle support while you sleep.
💡 Big Picture: Value in the AI economy is no longer a function of personal productive output. Delegation is the new threshold for abundance.
The builders who learn to orchestrate — not just execute — will ship faster, earn more, and operate like teams of ten.
ChatGPT Can Now Build Your App
On Friday, OpenAI upgraded ChatGPT with one of its most powerful capabilities to date: Codex.
Codex is the long-awaited AI coding assistant which is now integrated directly into the ChatGPT workspace.
The tool can write, edit, test, and even deploy production-ready code, all while speaking to it in plain English.
Users are already spinning up apps, scripts, and automations without writing a line themselves. This isn’t just about helping developers move faster. It’s about redefining who counts as one.
Codex is structured, responsive, and increasingly autonomous.
With the right prompts, it can behave like an on-demand junior engineer, taking direction, improving based on feedback, and pushing builds in real time.
💡 Big Picture: Skill leverage is evolving. Codex won’t make everyone a developer. But it does give anyone with a great idea the ability to turn vision into a $1M/year product.
During this month’s Rich Future Prime member Q&A, we received a question: what makes a business truly AI-proof in today’s economy?
One of the components we discussed was original ideas.
Apple Just Blinked. Google Gets Nervous.
Apple has quietly confirmed what many were waiting for: it may soon route Safari users away from Google and is actively exploring AI-powered search partners like Perplexity, Claude, and OpenAI.
While Google still pays $20B+ a year to remain the default, Apple’s Eddy Cue (SVP of Services) admitted that Safari search volume declined for the first time in April — another clear signal that attention is being diverted from traditional search behavior and into AI tools like ChatGPT.
While Apple’s been late to the AI game in many ways, this move suggests it’s still a power player, and it’s willing to play for one of the most important value drivers of the new economy… distribution.
If Safari defaults shift to favor AI-native discovery, so will a meaningful portion of the internet’s search traffic.
This neatly places Google’s ad empire, and the SEO playbooks built on top of it, on unstable ground.
💡 Big Picture: The future of search is no longer a query. It’s something you converse with.
For Brands and Creators:
You’re still early. What shows up in AI results is being actively redefined. Now’s the time to reposition your content for the new funnel.
Wall Street Doesn’t Want Human Robots Anymore.
A new Financial Times piece reveals a reckoning inside elite banks.
Firms like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley have raced to implement AI tools that streamline models, draft memos, and conduct research.
But with automations in place, they’ve been shocked to discover that junior bankers are still… necessary.
For years, entry-level talent was trained to operate like machines. Build decks. Run numbers. Follow the template.
But now that machines can do most of that work, firms are realizing they still need humans… just not in robotic roles.
What’s surfacing is a judgment gap — and it’s not one that AI can close.
These firms don’t just need faster output. They need analysts who can read nuance in a meeting, pick up on unspoken power dynamics, and know when a detail is a dealbreaker, not just a slide fix.
This exposes a truth the old labor market didn’t account for.
The next era of leverage includes skills that are deeply human… and mostly underdeveloped.
💡 Big Picture: AI is automating execution. But it’s also exposing the value of things we’ve long undervalued: discernment, relational fluency, holistic intelligence.
In a world where tasks are outsourced to agents and models, your edge isn’t output… it’s how human you’re willing to become.
Coinbase is Now S&P 500 Official.
Tomorrow, Coinbase becomes the first crypto-native company ever added to the S&P 500 — joining the likes of Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, and JPMorgan in America’s most-watched index.
This is both a milestone and a narrative reversal.
Just a few years ago, Coinbase was fighting for relevance, credibility, and survival during a market downturn. Now it’s become a structural piece of mainstream finance, whether institutions are ready to admit it or not.
Consider who currently makes up the S&P 500: tech giants, consumer staples, healthcare titans, energy producers.
Coinbase is none of those.
It’s infrastructure for a new financial layer and its inclusion hints at what kinds of companies will shape the future of markets.
What Stripe did for payments, Coinbase is doing for crypto rails.
Coinbase is paving the way for companies like Fold, a personal finance app powered by Bitcoin. Instead of traditional rewards points, you can stack your future net worth instead.
Just as there are multiple banks, there will be multiple on-ramps into the post-dollar economy.
💡 Big Picture: Finance moves slowly… until it doesn’t.
When the S&P 500 adds its first crypto-native company, it’s not just validating a market. It’s previewing a shift in who will define value, build trust, and move money for the next 50 years.
As we wrap up this week’s brief, here’s a quick window into what’s happening inside Rich Future Prime.
This month’s private Q&A covered everything from:
How to reposition your portfolio for the new economy
The 4 traits of an AI-proof business (and what most people miss)
What makes a digital product worth building in 2025
Knowing when to pivot vs. stay the course
How to get exposure to crypto & save on retirement account fees
The signal in there is sharp.
If that’s the kind of conversation you want to be in, Prime was built for you.
The builders of the next economy won’t wait for permission.
They’re watching what moves.
They’re playing for leverage.
They’re learning faster than the system is changing.
That’s who Rich Future™ is for.
More soon,
Kalei
Thank you for your thoughtfulness in curating these updates! Would love to know any thoughts on prepping for AI discoverability over Google
Great rundown Kalei! I'm excited for Codex as well!