Left to its own devices: Roku TVs are going high-end

1/4/24 7:00PM

Box on demand

‍‍Roku is hitting rewind, returning to its roots as a hardware innovator after announcing a “Pro” lineup of TVs, taking the company firmly into competition with other high-end TV manufacturers, with price tags for the new range that could reach close to $1,500.

Entering into the premium market with its own TV — after years of appealing to the masses — is a continuation of Roku’s strategy to get its platform software into as many homes as possible. For a long time, that meant partnering with manufacturers to have Roku software pre-installed.

‍Left to its own devices

‍Having started as an internal project at Netflix, Roku spun-out into its own company in 2008, launching its first set-top box and becoming a crucial enabler of the streaming revolution that let millions of viewers watch whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Having sold 10 million devices in its initial 6 years, the Roku boxes became a springboard for a much larger, much more profitable, platform business.

That platform segment, which includes advertising and content distribution, has undergone a remarkable evolution. In 2017, the revenue split between devices and platform was nearly a balanced 50/50. Fast forward to today, and the platform commands an overwhelming 85% of the total revenue.

Indeed, even if its successful in selling TVs for a thousand bucks (or more), Roku probably won’t make that much money from them: the company has sold its devices for less than cost, reporting a negative gross profit margin on its device sales in 4 of the last 5 quarters. Even so, every TV sold is another customer on its all-important platform.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5