At Spiral we’ve pivoted from building agentic content creation systems to solely focusing on newsletters, and there’s a good reason why.
Beehiiv founder Tyler Denk recently predicted that 2026 will be the year newsletters become the center of the U.S. creator economy.
It’s a bold statement, especially in a space dominated by video and social platforms.
But let’s follow his logic: Social platforms are crowded, volatile, and increasingly pay-to-play. Algorithms shift constantly. What worked one day can be obsolete overnight.
Newsletter operators, on the other hand, keep showing up in inboxes simply with the press of the “send” button.
On Beehiiv’s platform alone, paid subscriptions generated $19 million in 2025, up from $8 million the year before.
Yes, Denk is advocating for his own platform. He also just raised $33 million in Series B funding, which suggests investors see the same trend.
The takeaway is clear: It is a very good time to be in the newsletter business.
And it is not just Beehiiv. Other email platforms are seeing growth in open rates, send volume, list size, and monetization.
Even if email never becomes the center of the creator economy, newsletter platforms are projected to scale into a $3.44 billion market by 2029.
A smaller slice, but a much more engaged and potentially lucrative one. And what was once a time consuming and cumbersome process to create is now within reach for even more founders and organizations thanks to AI.
👑 HOT TAKES
How sustainable is AI’s current infrastructure? I went down the rabbit hole and in short the answer is: Not so much.
Currently, AI has a math problem no amount of bots can solve. Let’s break it down:
➡ ️ Last week, OpenAI and SoftBank added another $1 billion (as part of its $1.4 trillion tab) to the cash infusion being injected into AI data infrastructure.
➡ ️ Meta went nuclear, signing a deal totaling 6.6 gigawatts by 2035–-one of the largest corporate nuclear power purchases in U.S. history.
That’s because AI data centers require enormous amounts of reliable, continuous energy and cooling systems to grow at scale.
But here’s the real catch. The power grid does not currently support this level of growth long term. And yet, there is virtually no regulation.
Cue in images of a dystopian future in which AI robots and Crypto mines take over and consume all our energy while humans resort to living in the woods and burning trees for heat.
Well, this is awkward. Time to address the question that feels uncomfortable but unavoidable:
How much resource consumption is society willing to tolerate in exchange for intelligence gains?
Our Take:
While daunting, at Spiral we see this very real problem as an opportunity for innovation. Alternatives such as building data centers underwater or even in space are worth exploring.
Until then, we:
💡Think of AI as a scarce resource to be used deliberately, not casually.
💡Use less throwaway prompts, unnecessary functions and stick with our own critical thinking.
💡Build with intention
In practice, that means helping people turn their ideas into long-lived assets through email newsletters.
When AI helps you create something that endures, the energy cost spreads out over its lifespan.
When AI is used to generate disposable content, it does the opposite.
We also are building with the prediction that the future will be more constrained. Energy may get more expensive. Regulation may create restrictions. If your business only works because AI is cheap and infinite, that may backfire.
We would rather build with limits in mind now than be forced into them later.
🧠 AI ETHICS
This recent article, written by two AI researchers, explores the cost of outsourcing cognitive mastery to AI. That’s because when we push ourselves to the edge of our abilities, we experience higher performance, deeper engagement, innovation, and increased learning. When we outsource that to AI, our brains risk turning into mush.
Recent research highlights 41 percent of daily work is spent on non-value tasks. When repetitive and low-level thinking tasks are replaced by AI, it frees up employees for high-level thinking (aka the edge).
🤖 AI GURU
The Buddhist-friendly chatbots have arrived. Bhutan’s monastic community is piloting BuddhaBot Plus, a generative AI trained on classical religious scriptures. What stands out to me is the intention. This is AI being used as a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern life. We need tools to learn from both perspectives.
🔥 EXTRA HYPE
• Is the sun setting on free AI tools? (w/video)
• Anthropic and xAI’s territorial coding beef
• Google and CharacterAI settle lawsuits over teen suicide allegations
• Gemini just gave your Gmail a glow up
• Sales, marketing and entrepreneurship fields are more likely to adopt AI agents
• Like Pickleball? There’s a newsletter for that
🛠 TOOLS WE LOVE
What it is: AI-powered research and synthesis
Why we love it: We use it for market research on newsletter growth, emerging AI players, and market opportunities. With the recent acquisition by Meta, you’ll likely be seeing integrations across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.
✨ FINAL TAKEAWAY
AI is not free.
Energy is not infinite.
Attention is precious.
Build things that respect all three.
To 2026 and beyond,
Lucy Elizabeth & the Spiral Team
📨 P.S. If you are building a newsletter and want to eliminate the weekly scramble, that is exactly what we help our customers do.
And if this sparked something, forward it to an AI-curious friend.