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Appiness

Appiness #22

Apple caps what its engineers spend on AI, Revolut moves to its own model, Meta and OpenAI buy the tools around coding agents, and the Figma agent builds code straight from the prototype.

By Apps AS3 min read
Three blue circles growing in size from left to right on a pale blue background

Tech

  • According to TNW, Apple has cut some engineers' daily AI budget from $300 to $200, and further cuts may follow. Several other large companies have introduced similar caps.
  • According to The Register, Revolut has moved around 2,000 engineers from paid coding tools to GLM, an open language model it runs on its own servers. The company says its AI coding costs fell by roughly 90 percent.
  • Meta has bought Conductor, the app that runs several coding agents in parallel, each in its own copy of the project. The team joins Meta Superintelligence Labs. Conductor Cloud goes read-only on 13 November and shuts down on 20 November, so export what you have there.
  • The same day, OpenAI announced it is buying Pierre, which makes the code storage and diff tools Codex already uses.

Design

  • On 3 November, Figma's code layer agent started reading prototype connections and interactions when it builds code. Code layers is in open beta.
  • From the same day, code cloning is on by default when you connect a GitHub repository to Figma, on all plans. Admins can turn it off per repository.
  • On 5 November, the Figma agent started producing editable vector icons and illustrations with grouped layers and strokes, ready for Figma Motion.

Business

  • Stockholm-based Creandum has raised $750 million for its eighth fund, covering pre-seed to Series A. The fund puts AI at the centre and is also rebuilding its own sourcing, investment decisions and portfolio support around AI.
  • Danish Claimlane has raised €5.6 million in a Series A for an AI-powered after-sales platform and will expand in the US.
  • KI-dagene, Norway's AI conference, runs at Oslo Kongressenter on 25 and 26 November.

The Apps take

AI coding has moved from experiment to running cost. Apple caps it per engineer, Revolut switches to its own model to cut the bill, and the labs are buying the layer that orchestrates the agents. Whoever owns the agent layer also owns the price.

Figma shows the other side of the same story. When the agent reads the prototype and builds the code, the handoff from design to code becomes part of one file. That saves time, but code cloning is now on by default, and the same rule applies as for coding agents: someone has to know what the agent can reach. The risk sits where it always sits when software acts on its own.

Before the next invoice arrives, write down three things: what your agents cost per delivery, which model you could switch to without rebuilding, and which repositories your tools can read. Without those three answers, your vendor sets your budget.

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