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

Plus: Why Apple's cheap AI bet could pay off big

Author

Matt Davis
March 17, 2026

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Happy Tuesday, !

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

And now for some news you really N2K…

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

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Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

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

Tomi Mikula — CEO of Deliverd. Image courtesy of his LinkedIn profile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Apple won’t regret being cheap on AI

Apple: Just chillin’ while the other tech firms spend billions on AI. Image created by your Chedditor using Google Gemini’s Nano Banana Pro, to which Apple also happens to be outsourcing all its AI needs. We’re both so smart!

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

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

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

And no one owns more customers than Apple.

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

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

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

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

Quote of the Day

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81% of educators from recent research that we've done have reported that they don't have any AI training. They're looking for resources.

Why Samsung is teaching school kids about AI

Samsung’s Alison Stransky, left, with the billionaire Mark Cuban at a recent “Solve For Tomorrow” event.

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

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

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

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

Why Gen Z fears AI automation the most

A Gen Z’er scared of AI Automation. Image created by AI. Automatically. Can you tell?

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

Instead of fearing displacement, Marks thinks Gen Z should embrace AI as an upskilling tool. He explains that the entry-level job of the past "doesn't exist anymore." New hires must step over it by understanding AI tools: "Hiring me as a way more experienced person because I've got AI tools to back me up." His advice to people starting out is to "zero in on the AI technologies that are being built for that profession."

Furthermore, Marks predicts a "resurgence of liberal arts programs" as AI takes over mundane tasks. Employers will gravitate toward well-rounded people who can "communicate more to others around them, tell their stories," and market better — skills that human interaction and soft-skills-focused education cultivate.

So: The rich kids will continue to get all the best jobs? #Disruption

AI, Marks argues, is an augmentation, not a replacement, which is why businesses must invest in training to help their employees use tools like Google's Gemini to be "way more productive."

See the image on this story, for example. Did you notice that the Gen Zer in the image has three hands? Now that’s assured to be productive…particularly in certain career fields.

Song of the Day: Robyn, ‘Blow My Mind’

Later this month Robyn will finally release her new album, “Sexistential.” A lot of things have happened in the eight years since her last album “Honey,” including becoming a mother. This first single, "Blow My Mind," is the one song on Sexistential about Robyn's three-year-old son. The rest, I think it’s safe to say, are likely to be more about how he was conceived.

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Why this robotics company is partnering with Nvidia to build virtual robots

ABB Robotics: Using Nvidia chips to commission virtual robots before building real robots. That’s a lot to get your head around, I realize. Image created by your Chedditor in Google Nano Banana Pro.

Automation and AI are quickly reshaping global manufacturing. ABB Robotics $ABB ( ▲ 1.3% ) and NVIDIA $NVDA ( ▲ 1.65% ) have joined forces in a major new partnership designed to accelerate this shift. As Mark Sigura, president of ABB Robotics, explains, the collaboration aims "to enable customers across industries to deploy physical AI at the industrial grade."

What that actually means is expanding ABB's Robot Studio simulation software with NVIDIA chips, so ABB can build its robots in a virtual space and try them out before building them in real life. The virtual training environment delivers significant cost and time savings. Sigura notes that the highly accurate simulation eliminates the need for "physical prototypes where you break parts, where you experiment, all that you do in virtual." This streamlined process drastically reduces commissioning time, which goes "down by 80 percent."

Sigura sees this as the dawn of “physical AI,” which is the "translation of autonomy and versatility for robots." It enables robots to handle tasks in an "unstructured environment" without human help, making them a truly autonomous robotic workforce. This new platform, by making tools more available and robots more adaptable and resilient, will help companies "maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly global market.” He’s certain of it!

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👍️ 

Yes. Markets actually went up yesterday, although they went down a huge amount last week. You might want to wait a bit before checking in, unless you’re a masochist. You’ll remember I told you to leave your money in the market on Friday, I hope.

Poll of the day: Will you be hiring Deliverd™?

How annoying is it that, to save money on a new car, you've got to "hire a middleman to deal with the middleman to make the middleman more efficient."

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Bonus poll yesterday: You’re with Lodro

We asked: “Which of these haikus is better?”

You answered, wrongly:

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ "Moo moo moo moo moo, Moo moo moo moo moo moo moo, Moo moo moo moo moo." ~ Remy Zane (136)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 "Here’s a solid bet: Invest in nature not stocks. I find that mooooooving." ~ Lodro Rinzler (204)

340 Votes via @beehiiv polls

Not Sorry.

Poll of the day: You mistrust Microsoft

We asked: “Where do you stand on giving Microsoft's Copilot your health data?”

You answered:

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Honestly I'm curious what it has to tell me that I don't already know, and I trust the company enough to do it. (27)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 I trust my regular doctor just fine, thanks. I don't want my health data to be part of a tech gold rush. (397)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I'm somewhere in the middle. (134)
558 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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